Cat Coming Home

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  “I made chicken sandwiches,” she called. “Charlie’s coming by, she has some news, she sounds all excited.”

  The cats didn’t know what news could cheer Lori today, but Lori sat up and wiped her eyes. Slipping off the bed, looking back at the cats to come with her, she headed downstairs. Lori loved Charlie, as she loved Max and all their close circle of friends, and just now, she surely must need them around her.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the two big dogs were waiting, staring up. The cats weren’t afraid of the family Dalmatian, and Susan Brittain’s chocolate poodle, but they descended stiff-legged, their ears back, steeling themselves for the inevitable pummeling and sloppy licks. The minute they hit the bottom step the dogs were all over them, washing and nudging and harrying them until Joe Grey gave them a growl as loud as a tiger, and Kit hissed and raised a paw. Only then did they settle down, their lolling tongues showing doggy laughs as they followed Lori to the kitchen.

  The big white and yellow kitchen was bright with sunlight slanting in through its long bank of windows. On the round table sat a platter of quarter-cut sandwiches, a glass of milk for Lori, cups and a pot of tea for the women. Cora Lee and Mavity were already at the table. As Lori pulled out her chair, the cats leaped onto the planning desk tucked beside the refrigerator, out of the way of the dogs. The Dalmatian and poodle stood eyeing the table hungrily—until they heard the front door knocker. Then they raced away with Mavity, only to return the next moment frisking around Charlie Harper.

  The tall redhead came striding through, trying not to trip on the dogs as they gamboled around her. She carried a box of books. “For the library sale,” she said. “Three more boxes in the car.”

  Cora Lee nodded and took them from her. Charlie’s red hair was twisted into a lopsided knot at the nape of her neck, fiery tendrils framing her freckled face. Lithe and slim in her faded jeans, she wore a faded persimmon T-shirt, and her well-worn boots smelled of horses. She looked more vibrant than the cats had seen her since the Gazette began trashing Max and Molena Point PD, her cheeks rosy, her green eyes laughing.

  Mavity pushed back her glasses. “You heard from your editor.”

  “She likes it!” Charlie said. “She likes the new book! She tried all morning to get me on the landline, but I was up in the hills, I took a really long ride and didn’t have my phone turned on.” She pulled out a chair as Cora Lee poured a cup of tea for her. “She likes it even more than the last book. She …”

  She looked at Kit and went still. She rose at once and moved to the desk, standing in front of Kit, petting her and hiding Kit’s incensed, too revealing expression. She’d hurt Kit’s feelings. The tortoiseshell’s round yellow eyes were wide with hurt, with anger and dismay.

  Charlie’s first book had been about Kit herself, about an orphaned tortoiseshell kitten trying to survive in the wild on her own. It had been a great success with readers, and in Kit’s view it was the best book in the whole world. Now, here was Charlie with another book that was not about her, and the editor liked it better. Kit was hot with jealousy. The editor’s enthusiasm, and Charlie’s joy, seemed a terrible betrayal.

  “Editors always like the newest book best,” Charlie said, chagrined. “Or they say they do. They think that prods a writer to work harder. But,” she said, picking Kit up and cuddling her, “there’ll never be another book like Tattercoat. I’ll never, ever be able to write another story like that one. Everyone who reads it loves it, I get hundreds and hundreds of letters and emails telling me how much they love it.” Mavity and Cora Lee had read many of the letters; and of course Kit had read them all, each with a terrible thrill and with a deep and purring satisfaction.

  Their friends all knew, of course, that Kit had been the model for Tattercoat, for both the story and Charlie’s many drawings. But only a few people knew that Tattercoat was, in fact, Kit’s own true story, much of it told in Kit’s own words. So now of course Kit was jealous. Charlie held her close until at last Kit relaxed in her arms, her ears came up again, and she began to purr.

  “Still,” Charlie said, stroking Kit, “that doesn’t mean I should stop writing. It doesn’t mean I should stop trying, even though I know there will never, ever be another adventure as compelling, for me, as Tattercoat.” With Kit at last purring happily, Charlie sat down at the table, settling the tortoiseshell in her lap.

  “Well, your editor’s happy,” Cora Lee said, and Mavity smiled, as Charlie’s two friends, oblivious to the little cat’s anger, celebrated Charlie’s success.

  But Kit wasn’t the only one who had bristled. Across the table, Lori watched the three women with her fists clenched on her lap. Charlie and Mavity weren’t a bit interested that Pa was in the hospital and might die; neither one seemed to care at all. Charlie was so excited about an old book, so centered on herself. Didn’t grown-ups care about anything outside themselves? Didn’t they ever feel frightened? How come grown-ups were so smug and certain all the time, when it was all Lori could do just to hold herself together?

  She didn’t realize she was tearing her sandwich into little pieces until she looked up and saw Charlie watching her, saw the eyes of all three women on her. Cora Lee looked at Lori, then turned to Charlie. “I called Wilma this morning, I thought she’d call you. I guess you were riding. And when you called here …”

  “What?” Charlie said. “What is it? I didn’t check my messages, I just put the mare up and jumped in the car.” She looked at Lori, at her sullen expression. “What?” she said softly.

  “Lori’s pa was stabbed this morning,” Cora Lee said, “in the prison yard. They flew him to Salinas Valley Hospital, we just got back. He’s …” She glanced at Lori. “He’s not out of danger, but he’s stable.”

  Charlie reached across, took Lori’s hand in hers. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. You were with him this morning?”

  Lori nodded.

  “Were you able to talk with the doctor?”

  Again, a nod. But it was Cora Lee who answered. “The doctor says he’s strong, that he’s doing as well as he can.”

  Lori said, “I think they’re taking good care of him. He can’t …” Her voice caught. “He can’t die.” She turned away from the table, standing with her back to them, petting the three cats with one hand, stroking the two dogs with the other, where they’d come to lean against her, clutching the animals in her need, not bothering to wipe the tears from her face.

  Cora Lee watched her, but let her be. “The doctor said if he continues doing well he’ll soon be out of danger. He hopes he’ll improve enough by the end of the week so they can take him back to Soledad. He thought Jack should heal quickly; he’s young and strong, and he has Lori to get well for.” She looked up at Charlie, frowning. “It was the Colletto boy, Victor. I’ve already talked with Max. Until this gets sorted out, he doesn’t want Lori to go anywhere alone, not even in the yard, not even outside with the dogs.”

  Charlie rose and came around the table, putting her arm around Lori. “We can ride together, I’d like that, I’d like the company. Would you feel safe with me?” Lori nodded. Charlie didn’t ask about Lori working for Ryan; she knew Ryan wouldn’t let anything happen, knew that everyone would rally around the child. She only wished they could defend the village as handily against these home invaders.

  But Max would take care of them, Charlie thought—with a little assist from the feline contingent to hurry things along, hopefully to put these guys behind bars before Christmas.

  15

  BY NOON, THE day after she shot Martin and Caroline, after the cops had come and gone at the small house she’d rented, to tell her Martin was dead, the shooter knew the old woman hadn’t seen her. If Maudie had fingered her, the cops would have arrested her on the spot or, at the very least, have labeled her a person of interest and taken her in for questioning. What a laugh, those cops trying to break the news gently, that her ex-husband had been shot and killed, asking if there was someone, a relative or neighbor, who could come in
and stay with her. And then at last, asking ever so respectfully where she’d been that night, saying they hadn’t been able to reach her.

  She had the stubs of her plane ticket, the Visa charge slip, and room receipt from Vegas. Arriving early the day before, she’d seen friends and gambled. If she’d flown out again under another name and ID, no one needed to know that. You could gamble all weekend wherever you chose, at any hour you chose, and very likely no one would remember you. If you lost money and didn’t take a big winning, there was no record. A Southwest flight into Ontario International, pick up a rental car, drive back to Vegas and no one the wiser. The cops had nothing to tie her to the shooting or they’d have been all over her—the same way they’d been all over the wrecked car after the shooting, the same way they’d have searched the road and surrounding ranches and fields the next morning looking for tire marks, footprints, shell casings. The news said there were still no leads to the shooter. It didn’t mention a second person in the truck, and by now her driver was far away. Though holdbacks by the cops were common, this time she was inclined to believe what the sheriff’s department had told the press.

  Even if they’d found a casing, which they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t find a match to this gun on their fancy AFIS network. They might get a warrant to search the nearby houses and farms, but she’d left no trace in the “borrowed” truck; and she’d stayed on the gravel where there wouldn’t likely be tire marks. Any gravel in the tire tread would be natural enough, with the truck going in and out across the graveled drives and roads. The truck’s owner, Harley Owens, was the brother of a woman who worked where she’d worked. Vera Owens was so talkative that Pearl knew not only Vera’s personal habits but Harley’s as well—he wouldn’t be back there for another three weeks. The Owenses’ ranch was a weekend place, the few cattle that were pastured there belonged to a neighbor who cared for them. It had been blind luck that the ranch was located so near to Maudie’s cabin, an opportunity too good to let pass. It hadn’t taken long, watching the place for a few weekends, driving up in the morning and back at night, cruising the area, to know Vera had described Harley’s habits accurately.

  Everything had gone so smoothly. Every year at Easter vacation Maudie and Martin and Benny headed for Maudie’s cabin; this year was no different except to add Caroline and her brats. She’d left Vegas with ample time to meet her partner, and then to intercept Maudie’s arrival. Had timed it so well that once she’d picked the padlock, pulled the rental car into the old barn, and hot-wired the truck, they’d had to wait less than an hour on the dark side road until they saw the pale convertible coming, and had eased in behind it. All had gone as planned, it was the weeks following after the shooting that were tedious, fending off the saccharine sympathy of her new neighbors and coworkers, enduring the funeral—oh, she’d gone, all right. Had even managed to squeeze out a few tears. The reading of the will and trust was a shocker, but she should have known he’d waste no time leaving everything to Caroline, Benny, and the old woman.

  Some would say she should contest the will and try to break the trust, that she was Benny’s mother and should be the trustee of his share. But under the circumstances, that wasn’t smart. There were other ways to get what was rightfully hers.

  And there was more than the will and trust to worry about. It was no secret that after the funeral Maudie cleared out Martin’s and Caroline’s house with the assistance of Caroline’s sister; then Maudie put her own house on the market, preparing to leave L.A. But taking what with her? Caroline’s personal papers? Or did Caroline’s sister have them?

  With this in mind, and with apparently no follow-up interest from the law, she’d opted to move away just as the old woman was planning to do. She had told the LAPD detectives that staying in the city was too painful, that she was going down to San Diego for a while, to stay with a friend. Lay a trail on to Mexico for them to find, then turn around and head up the coast instead, where Maudie would soon be living. It wasn’t likely the old woman would imagine she’d come up there to the village, or that she’d maintained her own contacts in Molena Point so well. With Maudie busy getting herself settled, why would she wonder about her ex-daughter-in-law and those old connections, or what use Pearl might make of them? When, later, she opted to contact Maudie and get back her own, wouldn’t that be a nice surprise.

  16

  JASMINE VINES COVERED the high adobe wall that shielded the Colletto house from the street, the house’s pale sides broken by a richly fashioned wrought-iron gate that led to the sheltered garden. The three cats slipped between the curves of hammered metal into a jungle of rosebushes, low and fragrant ground cover, and lavender bushes. A roofed terrace ran the length of the house, its brick expanse graced with wicker chairs and potted geraniums. They could see, above the tiled roof, a second floor rising up, indistinct in the darkness, and to their right a driveway where Maudie’s black Lincoln was parked beneath the sheltering oaks before a double garage.

  The front door was of heavy oak, hand carved in the Spanish style, secured with wrought-iron hinges and a fancy wrought-iron latch. From somewhere to their left, lights spilled out onto the terrace, and they could hear the murmur of voices and the sounds of silverware on china, as if perhaps glass doors had been left open to the dining room. The air was sultry, the chill of the last few days having left the village until the next change in weather made itself known, the central California weather famous for its notional approach to Christmas.

  Mixed with the smell of jasmine, roses, and lavender came a heady scent of roast beef that made the cats lick their whiskers. Silent as shadows they slipped along past the front door, through the garden toward the muted voices and the good smells of supper.

  Where the light spilled out, wide glass sliders did indeed stand open, treating the diners to the mild evening breeze. In the dark surround, the lighted dining room seemed as magnified in importance as a stage, the play in progress as quaint as a painting from another era. The room was softly lit, with peach-colored walls and a pastel Kerman rug setting off dark, heavily carved furniture—ornate buffet, high-backed carved chairs—all rich and, in the cats’ view, pretentious. The long table was set with white linen, with gleaming white china, and thin crystal. The centerpiece of white candles cast flickering shadows across the faces of the six diners, and illuminated behind them an oversize gold-framed oil painting of red and pink roses that didn’t seem to go with the Spanish architecture. Or did it? Dulcie thought about the Spanish families who had settled in California during the hide and tallow days, how they had loved their rosebushes, importing them from Spain to plant around their grand haciendas, training their American Indian servants to care for and nurture the plants.

  But the image of a grand Spanish don and a beautiful Spanish lady at the table, as the setting seemed to demand, didn’t apply to these diners. James Colletto, seated at one end of the table, was a small, dull-looking man with short grizzled gray hair and a gray mustache, an everyday, ordinary kind of man dressed in an ill-fitting dark suit, a white shirt, and a satin tie with huge polka dots that might have come straight out of the forties. Carlene Colletto, at the other end of the table, was pudgier than her sister Maudie and seemed even softer. Her gray hair was done in precise waves that clung tight to her head. Her flowered dress and her pink, low-heeled pumps were surely holdovers, too, from the last century. Dulcie imagined her having put them away in a shoe box until they came back in style.

  Maudie and Benny sat with their backs to the cats, the Collettos’ sons across from them at the far side of the table in front of the oversize painting. The youngest, Kent, looked about eighteen, a tall, lanky young man with rounded shoulders, who sat slouched in his chair as if suffering from perennially weak bones. Or perennial boredom. His shoulder-length black hair was ragged, only hastily combed. All three cats wondered why his mother had let him wear that wrinkled shirt to dinner; they could almost smell the sweat. Beneath the table his blue and white jogging shoes were dirty and worn,
his jeans stained with grease. His scowl was so embedded that the cats couldn’t imagine him ever looking happy. He pointedly ignored his aunt Maudie, as if he had no use at all for her. When Carlene spoke to him, it was with an expression of helpless acceptance, and Kent’s replies were sullen. The boys’ father ignored him as if preferring to look anywhere else.

  Jared Colletto was maybe twenty. He was taller than his brother, thin and wiry and straight, neatly dressed in tan chinos and a white shirt. His thin, tanned face was clean shaven, his dark brown hair freshly cut. His eyes were a light brown; when he smiled he had dimples at the corners of his mouth, and his teeth shone white and straight. At least he knew how to smile—maybe he should give his brother lessons.

  Maudie was dressed in silky beige slacks, stockings and leather sandals, and a smocky patchwork top of pastel swatches in a pattern of partridges in a pear tree, an ode to the coming Yule that made Dulcie and Kit smile. Benny, sitting beside her, was so small that the table came halfway up his chest. Apparently Carlene hadn’t thought to offer him a phone book to sit on; he was forced to eat with his elbow straight out in order to reach his plate, an awkward and surely uncomfortable exercise. He was dressed in pale jeans and a clean blue polo shirt, his dangling feet sporting clean white tennis shoes.

  Carlene was saying, “… and they gave you a very nice interview, Maudie. Of course it’s only a local magazine, but still, that was very kind of them.”

  “The gallery arranged it,” Maudie said, “while I was still in L.A. It’s such a beautiful magazine, so slick and bright, and they did a lovely spread. So many color photographs of my quilts. Every village shop of importance seems to advertise in it. I feel flattered to be included.”

  “I’m surprised you arranged for an exhibit, with Martin barely in his grave.”