Cat Telling Tales

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Though even then, that tiny little thing was strange and different. So covetous, for one thing, stealing the neighbors’ sheer stockings and bright scarves right through their bedroom windows, even then a clever little break-and-enter artist. And look at her now, a bold, grown-up, crime-solving lady, too often wired for trouble.

  The day Dulcie first spoke, that was a shock to them both, had left them both shaken, staring at each other, Dulcie’s green eyes huge with amazement, Wilma trembling as if with vertigo. Dulcie’s disbelief had made her laugh, and hearing her own human laugh, she was startled all over again.

  And now, besides her aggressive fascination with village crime, look what else the feisty little tabby was up to. She was suddenly filled with poetry, caught up in a whole new obsession, “What a lovely cat she is, Posed behind the curtain’s gauze . . .” And tonight, when Wilma stopped by the library after leaving the Damens’, and had turned on the computer, she found a new poem waiting. She hoped this was only the first verse, only the beginning, because it did make her smile.

  All along the cliff top blowing

  She stalks her prey in grasses growing

  Forest tall and thick above her

  Quick and silent feline hunter

  Queen of the high sea meadow

  She thought there would surely be more verses, that Dulcie might even be toying with the lines as she crouched beside Joe out in the freezing night, watching the police at work. She longed to follow them, but sensibly she ignored the urge, finished her cocoa and set the mug aside. She drew the curtain again and switched on the lamp, dispelling the comfortable dark, and reached for her book. Sliding deeper under the covers, she read for the rest of the night, or tried to. Even through the book’s gripping mystery she kept seeing the cats out in the cold, seeing the squad cars, the busy officers, wondering which detective had come out, which officers were on duty, all of them illuminated in theatrical unreality by the harsh strobe lights; she kept wondering what had happened to bring them out, what was happening, called out by the phantom snitches.

  The cottage roof next door to Sammie’s was quickly growing white with snow, and the cats’ backs and noses were dusted with snow. This wasn’t a five-minute flurry, destined soon to melt away again, this snow was building, it was clinging, it seemed to be serious. The harsh lights below them picked out each drifting flake, and reflected from the cops’ slickers, and from the snow-covered patrol cars. One black-and-white was parked just below them in the side yard, one out at the curb beside Kathleen’s white Ford. In the drifting snow, two officers were stringing crime-scene tape; they had already cordoned off the open cellar door, which spilled light out into the yard brightening each drifting snowflake. Only a few minutes ago, Detective Kathleen Ray had gone down into the cellar alone, carrying more lights and her black crime-scene bag. “Where’s Davis?” Dulcie said.

  “Her knee’s worse,” Joe said. “I heard Brennan talking, said it was swollen twice its size, said she was meeting the doctor at his office. Brennan says she’ll probably have to have a knee replacement.” Dulcie shuddered, she didn’t like to think about surgery. When Wilma had had gall bladder surgery, that was bad enough, she’d worried herself into a frazzle until her housemate was healed and well again. Below, more lights came on in the cellar as Kathleen got to work. The tall, slim brunette had arrived dressed in jeans and a yellow slicker, her long dark hair stuffed up under a yellow cap. Entering the cellar, she had pulled on cloth booties over her running shoes. She reached out the door twice as Officer Crowley handed her additional lights and her camera bag. Kathleen was, in Joe Grey’s opinion, too beautiful to be crawling around in the dirt, crawling back under there into that putrid stink.

  “I crawled in,” Dulcie said. “You didn’t worry about me spoiling my looks, or gassing myself or getting splinters in my paws.”

  “You’re tougher than a human woman,” Joe said, cutting her a look. “And far too beautiful to ever spoil your looks, even with dirt in your fur.”

  They could see into the cellar for only a little ways, could see, in the painfully bright lights, deep marks in the earth where the body had been dragged in. Kathleen hunkered along at the side, away from these. Twice she paused to look at Dulcie’s paw prints, and both times, she’d photographed them. The first time, she had called out to the waiting officers to ask if Sammie had cats.

  “Did she have to notice that?” Dulcie said.

  “Of course she’d notice, that’s her job,” he said smartly.

  Officer Brennan, looking like a tent with legs in his wide black slicker, had said Sammie had two cats, that when they found Emmylou Warren in the house she said she had come up to feed them, said she couldn’t find them. Kathleen had nodded, and disappeared. There’d been a long silence in which they imagined her inching her way back toward the furnace, placing her lights as she went.

  They imagined her finding the partially buried fingers, envisioned her carefully uncovering them until she had, like Dulcie, revealed the buried hand and arm; she would photograph them, and photograph the surround. She would be kneeling on a small sheet of plastic, and as she resumed digging, she would brush away a few grains of earth at a time with a soft paintbrush. To find what? Only the hand and arm? Or the murder victim? Was this Sammie Miller? And, beneath this bloated but intact body, what would she find to account for the far more sick-making smell that seemed to come from underneath?

  Sounds were becoming muffled as the snow accumulated. On the snowy roof, the two cats huddled together shivering as the temperature dropped degree by falling degree. Dulcie hoped Wilma’s garden wouldn’t freeze, she hoped Wilma wasn’t out there in her slippers and robe, covering her prize plants with newspapers and old sheets.

  In the cellar, the position of the lights changed again and again, coming from different angles as Kathleen photographed the grave. They heard her talking on her cell phone, there was a little silence when the call ended, then the lift of her voice as she made a second call. At the third call, Dulcie eased forward. “Maybe I can just slip in and listen.”

  “No way,” Joe said, hauling her back with a nip to the butt that got him a swat on the nose. “You want to get caught in there? She’s already wondering about the paw prints.”

  Sighing, she settled back, pawing snow off her ears. Silence again, only the soft mutter of the police radios. Kathleen would have a black-and-white camera in there, one for color, and a video. She would already have photographed the drag marks and, who knew, maybe she’d found a trace of the killer’s footprints. By the time Dallas Garza’s tan Blazer pulled up next to Kathleen’s car, Sammie’s yard and drive were more white than brown, and the pines and cypress trees looked like a Yosemite postcard.

  Dallas stepped out of the Blazer looking as if he had just rolled out of bed, his heavy boots pulled over the gray sweats he might have slept in, his black slicker hanging crookedly, his short dark hair mussed from sleep. Walking the narrow path between two barriers of yellow tape, to the lighted cellar door, he knelt down, looking in, touching nothing as he talked with Kathleen.

  “We have a body,” she said. “Smells like more than one. I called the state forensics lab, two techs are on the way. We’ll have another in the morning, and possibly their entomologist. And I called Ryan. I’m thinking we could cut away the outside wall nearest the grave, give them space to work, room to move back and forth, and get the body out without trampling the surround.”

  Dallas considered this, and nodded.

  Atop the roof, Dulcie said, “Working in there, with that stink, has to be like working right inside the grave. Why does anyone do that, why do people choose this kind of work?”

  “The need to know,” Joe said. “Why are we here freezing our butts and starving? You ever think what life would be like, if no one went after the bad guys?”

  Dulcie sneezed. “So, all this work, and the courts let half of them loose again.”

  Joe didn’t have an answer to that. They were licking snow from th
eir fur when Ryan’s red king cab came up the street. Parking just beyond the squad cars, she moved down along the house following the officers’ footsteps on the narrow, muddied path between the yellow tape. Crouching beside her uncle Dallas, she peered in. The conversation came in snatches as they considered ways to keep the scene from being trampled and contaminated by sawdust as she removed a portion of the wall.

  “I can prefabricate a frame,” she said, “then bolt it together inside the cellar, a barrier between the basement wall and the grave. Staple a sheet of plastic to it, seal off the site before we start the tearout.”

  Dallas nodded. “That should contain the debris, keep it off the surround and body.” They discussed the details of the construction, then he headed around the house to the front, to work the scene inside. Joe wanted to follow him, but there was a limit to how much they could push. Cats in the office. Paw prints at the scene. Cats following him around that little crowded space inside wouldn’t be a good idea. Dulcie said, “I’m freezing and I’m starving, and there won’t be much more action for a couple of hours, until the techs get here.”

  He looked at her like she was abandoning the mission.

  “Even then,” she said, “it could take them the rest of the night to free the body, bag the evidence underneath, take samples, get the corpse onto a gurney. And maybe have to dig out a second body. While we freeze our tails and starve, and then they’re off to the lab, and we don’t know any more than we do now.”

  “I guess,” he said reluctantly. If he’d been alone he’d have stayed all night, hungry and cold or not. But he saw how cold she was, her ears down, her tail tight around her, trying not to shiver, and he knew she needed breakfast and a warm bed. “I guess they won’t bring the first body out until daylight,” he said. Another patrol car had arrived with two officers to help secure the scene if onlookers or the press began to gather. Maybe, with the amazement of snow, the villagers’ attention would be elsewhere. As the officers worked, one or another would look up at the falling snow, look around at the white yard, the accumulating snow weighting down the trees, and they’d start to grin. Snow, and it was nearly Valentine’s Day.

  Nearly Valentine’s Day, Joe thought, nearly Ryan and Clyde’s first anniversary. And here Ryan was, pulled out of bed on a freezing morning to work in the middle of a foul-smelling murder scene—plus, the happy couple was saddled with Debbie Kraft, whining to be taken care of. He looked at Dulcie again, at the way she was shivering. “Let’s cut out of here, my ears are freezing off.” He looked toward Ryan’s truck. “If we hurry, we can hitch a ride.” They were poised to drop down the nearest tree and race to the truck bed when Ryan turned away from the cellar, headed for her king cab to go gather the materials she’d need, and swung in. The cats were halfway down the tree when she started the engine, and backed out and pulled away.

  Hadn’t she seen them? It had looked as if, when she glanced in her side mirror, she was looking right at them. “Well, hell,” Joe said. Sopping wet and cold, they looked after her longingly, then took off across rooftops, bounding like rabbits in the cover of snow. Hadn’t she guessed they’d be there? Who did she think called in the report? When she was summoned out of her warm bed, didn’t she wonder why Joe didn’t come bolting down from his tower? Where did she think he was, but already at the scene? When she saw it was snowing, didn’t she worry about her poor little cat, out in the freezing night? And where was Clyde? Still home in bed sound asleep and not a worry in his thick skull? Humping across the white roofs beside Dulcie, freezing his paws, he had worked himself almost into a temper when, two blocks from the crime scene, they saw the red king cab parked at the curb, the engine running, its exhaust flume rising white on the cold air.

  Ryan was standing out on the curb, looking up.

  Within seconds they were inside, snuggled warm against her, drenching her jeans and her red leather seats as they licked their sopping fur. Heading down the hill, she looked over at them with a little smile. “How did you explain to the dispatcher that you just happened on a buried body in the back of a deep crawl space, in the middle of the night?”

  “I didn’t,” Joe said. “I hung up.”

  “Three squad cars,” she said, “six uniforms and two detectives, the San Jose techs on their way down that icy freeway, a contractor called out in the middle of the night. All of this, Joe, hanging on one short, unidentified phone call.” She looked at him and smiled and shook her head. “So how did you find the body?”

  “A little break-and-enter,” Dulcie said innocently. “From there, one thing just led to another.”

  Ryan sighed, reached in the backseat, found a towel ripe with the smell of dog, and dropped it over them. “I guess the department has decided not to ask questions, just to be thankful for what they get.” Letting the truck ease over an icy patch without touching her brakes, she coasted to the curb in front of Dulcie’s house.

  The front windows were dark. But they could smell smoke from the woodstove, and could see a light at the back, glancing up the hill, so Wilma would be awake in bed, reading. “Awake and worrying,” Dulcie said guiltily.

  Ryan reached over the cats, opened the passenger door, watched Dulcie streak for the house and vanish through the plastic flap. When she looked down at Joe, he was laughing. “What?”

  “She’ll climb in bed ice-cold and sopping wet, push right in against Wilma.”

  That, in fact, wasn’t a bad idea. Snuggle up next to Clyde, thaw his frozen paws on Clyde’s warm, bare back.

  Ryan scowled at him. “You can do what you’re thinking, Joe. Shock him out of a nice sleep—and go to your own bed hungry. Or you can endure the hair dryer to get warm, and finish up the fillet I saved for you, from supper.”

  Well, hell. What choice did a little cat have? “Rare?” he asked.

  “Of course, rare,” she said. “With a side of kippers on a warm plate.”

  And that, of course, was no contest.

  25

  The Harpers kept the barn closed up at night, the big doors at both ends drawn shut against the wind and cold, and against predators, two-legged or four. Now in the early dawn, the alleyway was dim, but the light was strange, unnaturally pale. Billy woke in his box stall to a glow more white than shadowed, white light seeping in above the stall door, and the air was freezing. His face and hands were icy while the rest of him was too hot. Six cats were piled on top of him, and one curled up between his shoulder and chin, all seven snuggled close trying to keep warm. Sliding his hands under them, he luxuriated in their body heat and warm fur. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. He wasn’t in his own bed on the thin pad through which you could feel the rough slats, this bed was soft, and saggy in the middle, and he was tucked between real sheets, smooth and smelling of laundry soap, and the blanket was soft and thick, too. And the air—the cold air didn’t stink of whiskey and throw-up, it smelled of horses and of fresh, sweet hay. All this in an instant, and then he sat up spilling cats every which way, realizing he was in the Harpers’ barn.

  He swung out of bed, and stood looking out through the hinged mesh barrier that formed the top half of the stall door. Down at the end of the alley, the light seeping in around the big doors was bright white, the faint movement of air freezing cold. The horses were stirring in their stalls, restless and wanting breakfast. When he turned to look at the cats, they were hungry, too, all seven lined up in a row, now, waiting to be fed—but they, too, were puzzled by the light, they sat glancing up at the door and up at the ceiling, watching a shaft of white light that fingered through, where the timbers joined the wall. Striped Sam, and black Lulu, they were Gran’s favorites. He thought of Gran and felt his stomach go hollow. The image would never be gone, Gran lying dead on that stretcher, her charred body, his not wanting this to be real, wanting it not to have happened, wanting to believe that such a thing couldn’t happen.

  He had seen the fire as he came up the highway, pumping hard up the steep hill, saw the EMT van turn in and had rac
ed to catch up, raced behind in its cloud of dust down the dirt lane, saw the fire truck and cop cars and felt his stomach turn hollow. Like he felt now, hollow and sick. Gran on the stretcher, her clothes and skin burned black. They had pulled him away, wouldn’t let him near, he couldn’t touch her. She was gone, she wasn’t his gran anymore, she was a foreign thing. He had stood by the wet, black timbers, the live red coals, the smoke and steam and the stink of burning rags, trying to understand that Gran was dead, stood there until the hollow sickness in his belly made him retch and turn away.

  But then later a jolt of something else hit him and he was immediately ashamed. Part of him felt free. Free of Gran’s drinking, of dragging himself awake in the middle of the night to hold a bucket so she could throw up, free of cleaning up after her and cleaning her up, having to change her nightie and get her back into her bed. He hated trying to clean up the rough wood floor, you could never scrub that stuff out, never get the smell out, the place always stank of throw-up. And then every night when she went off to work, seeming to be sober, worrying she’d have a wreck, get hurt, or hurt or kill someone else.

  Now he was free. So free he felt like running, like he could fly, he was free of an old woman who refused to take care of herself, refused to take any responsibility for what she did to them both.

  He loved Gran, but even right after she died, right after the fire, the burst of lightness and freedom inside him had felt pretty damn good.

  Did you burn in hell for such thoughts?

  The bag of kibble stood on a cardboard box that Charlie had brought in for him to use as a table. He poured the dry food into the cats’ dishes, set them on the hard dirt floor, and the cats dove in growling softly at each other. No one tried stealing, they were pretty good about that. Out in the stable, Charlie’s sorrel mare nickered for her hay and banged the door, and the two big dogs, who were shut loose in the alleyway at night, stood up on their hind legs, their front paws on the stall door, looking in. Both were fawn colored, they were litter brothers, Charlie had said, most likely of a Great Dane mother and maybe fathered by a German shepherd. Both were huge and ungainly and still acted like puppies, until Charlie or Max took a hand with them. After the fire, Charlie had shown him the smoke alarm that was wired from the barn to the house, and the speaker that, if there was trouble, if there was fire or a break-in, would let her and Captain Harper hear the dogs barking.