Cat Deck the Halls

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  As they drew back into the shelter of the mock-orange bushes, the small, dark-clad woman swung a leg over the low sill, ducked under the upper glass, eased herself out and dropped to the ground. She was still dressed in jeans and a navy sweater, and was carrying black canvas backpack. Moving past the bushes where the cats crouched, stepping close enough so they could have slashed her ankles, she headed fast down across the yard to the street below and then along the narrow sidewalk.

  Silent and quick, Joe and Dulcie were behind her. Trotting along through the neighborhood gardens, taking what cover they could, they tried to look like wandering neighborhood kitties as they followed Evina Woods. Twice she turned to look behind her. The first time, they leaped after a nonexistent bird that seemed intent on escaping them. Evina was so small and fine-boned that from the back she looked like a girl; only when they saw her face did they see the lines from sun and weather, and the large, prominent nose. Her black hair was short and scraggly, with a reddish gleam where the sun hit it. She made no friendly gesture toward the wandering kitties, as many folk would do; she was not, apparently, a cat lover. The cats, drawing more deeply into the shadows, followed her for two blocks, ducking into the bushes, watching as she got into a big, tan, rusted-out Chevy so old it had tail fins, a dinosaur of a car.

  “A ’51 Chevy,” Joe said, well schooled in matters automotive from living with Clyde. “I don’t remember the name of that model.” They memorized the Oregon license number, though very likely this was the car on which Harper had already run the plates. They watched it head downhill toward the village, its dented top rust red where the tan paint was worn away to the primer. When they could no longer see it, they headed back for Kit’s house.

  “You can bet Lucinda went down there without telling Pedric,” Joe said. He turned to look at Dulcie. “What’s she up to?” They had never known Lucinda to keep secrets from Pedric; the old couple were completely devoted to each other. They rounded the house through Lucinda’s camellias and ferns, scrambled up the oak and across the horizontal branch to the dining-room window. There they paused, listening.

  Kit and Lucinda were arguing, a heated family disagreement that made Joe and Dulcie back away. The two seldom argued, not with this kind of anger. And now Pedric joined in, snapping at Lucinda. Through the cat door came the lovely smells of Christmas, pine scent from the Christmas tree and the lingering aromas of baking-all spoiled by the angry voices. The two cats listened, shocked, Joe’s ears back and his yellow eyes narrowed. But then as the argument raged, he sat down on the sill and began with great concentration to wash his front paws. He cleaned all four feet and then his silver-gray coat-while Dulcie responded to her friends’ quarrel by nervously biting her claws, removing the outer sheaths to sharpen each curved rapier.

  Both cats felt they shouldn’t be listening to this private family scuffle. Except that this was not strictly a family disagreement, this might soon be a matter for the police, Lucinda’s safety was at stake here. And, anyway, who ever said cats weren’t nosy?

  21

  “I TOLD EVINA,” LUCINDA was saying, “that the police had already been here and we didn’t file charges. I said before we did that, we wanted to know what this is about.”

  “That’s not what I want,” Pedric grumbled. “I want her out of here, pronto. I want her in jail, Lucinda, before she hurts you.” Pedric was no longer standing back. The thin old man was worried, and furious. Dulcie and Joe had never seen him so angry. They looked at each other, half amused, half frightened.

  “She hasn’t harmed anything,” Lucinda said evenly.

  “She scared the hell out of all of us, and she could have hurt you, bad. And damage? We don’t know what damage she might have done taking those pictures and spying. Do you want to be a party to some kind of blackmail?”

  Lucinda looked surprised, as if she hadn’t thought of that-but Kit leaped to the arm of her chair, hissing at both of them. “When you questioned her,” Kit asked impatiently, “what did she say, Lucinda?”

  “She gave me a wild tale,” Lucinda admitted. “And yet…She was so upset. She sounded…Well,” Lucinda said with embarrassment, “I’m really inclined to believe her.”

  Pedric snorted. Kit didn’t reply. Joe and Dulcie, unable to remain uninvolved, slipped in through the cat door and dropped from the windowsill to the dining-room rug, beneath the table.

  Looking into the living room, which Lucinda had turned into a forest of evergreen boughs dominated by the Christmas tree in the far corner, they were very still. The room smelled of pine and nutmeg, and a fire burned on the hearth. The cats could see only the back of Pedric’s head where he sat, rigid and angry. Kit sat on the rug, between their two chairs, looking intently at the thin old woman. “Tell us, Lucinda. Tell us what she said.” The fire’s pleasant crackling was the only comforting sound in the tense room.

  “She told me she followed those three down from Eugene,” Lucinda said. “She thinks-is convinced that one of them killed her niece, after the girl testified against him.”

  “This was in Oregon?” Pedric said.

  “No, that was in southern Arkansas, some little backwoods town. She told me that when the killer ran, she thought he would head to Oregon to his girlfriend, and-”

  “Then why is she here?”

  “Let me finish. She said that he’d been phoning the girlfriend, that she’d found portions of his phone bills in his trash.” Lucinda gave Pedric a wrinkled smile. “She broke into his cabin and tossed it. She said she couldn’t go to their sheriff with her suspicions, that he would have done nothing.”

  “Lucinda,” Pedric said, “that’s-”

  “She said the killer was thick with the law in their town, and that the sheriff was so corrupt she had no faith he’d ever arrest the man.”

  “Lucinda, this sounds…” But at her look, Pedric went silent.

  “You grew up in the South,” she said. “You know what some of those little country towns are like that. Good-old-boy buddies, looking out for their own.”

  Pedric wouldn’t argue. “Start from the beginning,” he said. “Try to make sense of what you’re saying.”

  Lucinda looked beyond Pedric to the dining room. “Come in by the fire, you two, and get warm.”

  Quietly, Dulcie and Joe padded in, settling on the thick rug by Pedric’s feet, and Lucinda continued. “Her name is Evina Woods. She followed Leroy Huffman, the man she thinks killed her niece, from Arkansas to Eugene, then down here.”

  “From the beginning,” Pedric repeated.

  Lucinda sighed. “Huffman had been dating a friend of her sister, Neola Black. Evina said he milked Neola for everything, including ten acres of land that he got her to deed to him. Evina’s sister couldn’t talk sense to Neola, not even when there was nothing left but the woman’s house. Only when he tried to get her to mortgage that, after he hadn’t paid back any of the money she’d loaned him, did Neola come to her senses.

  “Evina said that when Neola refused to mortgage her house, Huffman killed her. Maybe to avoid her filing a complaint with the county attorney, or simply in a fit of rage-Evina said he was known for his violent temper.

  “Evina’s seventeen-year-old niece, Marlie, saw him kill Neola; she was the only witness. She saw them in the woods behind Neola’s house, saw him stab her…saw them fighting, saw Neola twist and fall and lie still. Marlie ran home to her mother, she didn’t think Huffman saw her. When Marlie and her mother went to the sheriff, he laughed at them.

  “He sent someone out for Neola’s body, all right. But he made fun of Marlie and her mother, said he knew for a fact that Huffman had left town two days earlier, that the sister’s death had been a simple accident, that she’d fallen on her own butcher knife.

  “Marlie asked why she’d have a butcher knife in the woods, and the sheriff said he’d heard she collected herbs sometimes, and that she liked to gather mushrooms.

  “Now, mind,” Lucinda said, “this is what Evina told me. She and her sister
went to the county attorney, and he took action. Finally this Leroy Huffman was arrested and charged with murder.

  “Marlie testified at the trial, but according to Evina, even the county attorney wasn’t too clean. She said Huffman got only six months, for accidental manslaughter, that the jury apparently believed, or was bullied into saying, that’s all it was.”

  “Sounds,” Pedric said, “like something she took off a TV movie.”

  Lucinda shook her head. “She sounded…It was hard for her to tell this. The poor thing kept…Either she’s a mighty good actress, or her story’s true. She seems really shaken over this.”

  “But how does that put her here?” Kit said. “What was she doing in our house, taking pictures?”

  “She said that the same week Leroy Huffman got out of prison, Marlie, who had testified against him, disappeared. That she hadn’t told her mother she was going anywhere, and she wasn’t the kind of girl to just take off. And then, a few days later, Huffman was gone. Apparently there was nothing legal to stop him, he’d done all his time.

  “Marlie was popular, and the sheriff said she probably ran away with some guy, or that if she hadn’t run away, then maybe she felt ashamed after she’d testified against Huffman. Evina says Marlie wouldn’t go away like that and worry her mother.

  “She was so sure that Huffman had either killed Marlie or had her prisoner, that she broke into Huffman’s house, dreading what she’d find.” Lucinda stroked Kit, and sipped her cold coffee. “She didn’t find any trace that Marlie had been there. But she found letters from Huffman’s girlfriend in Oregon, and the torn-up phone bills in the trash showing several recent calls to Eugene. She traced the phone number, and it was the girlfriend’s number, all right.

  “Now she had the woman’s address, and with no other clue to where Huffman might have gone, and still thinking he might have Marlie with him, she headed for Eugene, caught a red-eye flight. In Eugene she bought an old car so she’d be able to follow him.

  “She watched the girlfriend’s house until she saw Huffman, he was staying there with the girlfriend and another man that Evina thought was her brother. For several days she spied on the house. She saw no sign of her niece, and was beginning to think he’d killed her. She waited until all three were out, and then broke in there, too. But again, no niece.”

  “Quite the skilled little housebreaker,” Pedric said, and Dulcie cut an amused look at Joe. Pedric Greenlaw was the gentlest of people, though he was far from weak or innocent. He had committed his own share of petty crimes in the distant past.

  Maybe that was why he was angry now, was more distressed by Evina than was Lucinda, more willing to see through Evina’s story.

  “But in the house in Eugene,” Lucinda said, “Evina found her niece’s locket and watch.

  “There were several duffel bags packed and sitting by the door, and in the garage a stack of packed boxes. On a desk, she found some clippings and papers that made her think they meant to head down the coast, that they had some business in California.

  “She left Marlie’s jewelry there, but took pictures of it in that setting. She watched the house, and when they left Eugene, she followed them.” Lucinda paused when Kit rose to stand on the arm of her chair, looking her squarely in the face.

  “This is too much, Lucinda. That woman is putting you on.”

  “Just listen, Kit. Just, for once, be still and listen.”

  “I have been listening,” Kit said crossly, exchanging an exasperated look with Pedric before she turned her face away from her beloved Lucinda.

  “Please, Kit.” Lucinda looked shaken at being pitted against both Pedric and Kit, the two she loved best in all the world. She stroked Kit, trying to make up, but Kit remained aloof, her tail lashing.

  “Let me finish,” Lucinda said more sharply. “From the clippings she found, Evina thought that in coming to Molena Point, they were after some kind of artwork, something from the last century.

  “I asked her if they seemed the kind of people to know about art. She said the woman’s letters to Huffman mentioned several Seattle galleries where she’d worked. Evina said the letters were vague, didn’t spell out exactly what they might be planning, but said that if he wanted to come out to the coast and help them, they might make a real haul. That’s how the letters put it.

  “She said the letters also mentioned Betty Wicken’s brother, Ralph, that she had to keep him with her, after what had happened, that he was a real worry. That if she left him on his own he’d be in trouble again, and be back in prison.”

  Lucinda shook her head. “Evina said she cares only about what happened to her niece. That when she found out more, she’d go to the police, and get an attorney. That she took those pictures of the Wickens so she would have some identification to give the police. The Xerox copies, she said, are from a roll of film that Betty Wicken’s brother took into the drugstore.

  “She said she saw him by accident, she was back by the cosmetics aisle when he took the film in. Curious about him and what crimes he’d committed that Betty was so worried about, she returned early on the day the pictures were to be ready, picked them up, Xeroxed them, and then returned the envelope saying it was given her by mistake, said the clerk didn’t question that.”

  Lucinda looked hard at Pedric, and at Kit. “Evina came all this way to find out what happened to her niece. She planned well enough to bring a piece of Marlie’s laundry, for DNA testing. She means to get into that house down there and look for Marlie or for some further evidence.”

  Pedric remained silent. Joe and Dulcie couldn’t see his face. The whole story sounded so strange and unlikely-yet the cats had never known Lucinda to be such a soft touch for a hard-luck story.

  “This Leroy Huffman,” Pedric said, “did she tell you anything else about him?”

  “She said he’d lived all his life in their little town, and had always been in trouble, but his family had always been tight with those who ran the town, that the present sheriff and Leroy’s father were second cousins, and that Leroy and his two brothers could get away with anything.”

  “But how do the pictures fit in?” Kit said. “The ones of the Home and the children?”

  “In the house in Eugene, she had found one old, yellowed clipping about the brother, Ralph, and a child abduction. She tried to check on him, to see if he was a registered sex offender, thinking the information might help in some way, but molesters living in Oregon aren’t required to register.” She said no more, but they were all thinking of the dead man and the little child in the plaza. Could Ralph Wicken have tried to kidnap her, and the man fought him off, and Wicken killed him?

  “Did she see if he was registered here?” Pedric asked.

  “She tried on that Web list,” Lucinda said. “For California, and then the national one, but he wasn’t listed in either.”

  The kit began to fidget, thinking about Betty Wicken’s fingerprints on the broken pot shards, and what those prints might show. Did Betty Wicken have a record? And was Wicken their real name, or an alias? Was that why Ralph didn’t show as a registered sex offender?

  But now, with Betty’s fingerprints, could the department identify her? And if she had a record, would it show information about her brother? So much to learn, Kit thought nervously, all based on the fingerprints lying unguarded among the bushes, hidden only by a few rotting leaves. She looked intently at Lucinda.

  “What?” Lucinda said uneasily.

  “We have Betty Wicken’s fingerprints,” Kit said with a twinge of guilt.

  Lucinda was very still. “You promised me, Kit, not to go down there.”

  Kit looked at Lucinda, as wide-eyed and innocent as a kitten.

  “Where are the fingerprints?” the thin older woman said patiently.

  Silence.

  Lucinda sighed. “Down in that house?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You are not to go down there again, for any reason. Particularly now that we know more about those
three. Is that clear, Kit?” It was. Kit dropped her gaze in consternation.

  But Pedric looked at Kit slyly and rose from his chair, and hiding the first smile the cats had seen all morning, the old man put on his outdoor shoes and his jacket, questioned Kit further, and then went down the hill himself.

  Despite his somewhat shady past, Pedric Greenlaw was a tall, erect, white-haired man as dignified-looking as a federal judge. No one who saw him wandering the oak woods would suspect him of prying into the lives of others-even when he knelt to dig among the wet leaves and lift out the white plastic bag, slipping it swiftly under his coat. Pedric had been raised from childhood to the skills of a pickpocket and shoplifter, talents of which he was no longer proud but that could sometimes be put to good use.

  22

  F ELINE PROMISES ARE not, from a cat’s viewpoint, really meant to be kept. Except, of course, when the cat is closely watched and can do little else. Five minutes after Pedric returned up the hill with the evidence hidden in his coat, while he was busy in the kitchen and Lucinda was on the phone to Max Harper, the cats slipped out and headed for the rental house, reassured that the pot shards were on their way to the police.

  Even as they raced down through the wet woods, they heard the Greenlaws’ garage door open, heard the car start. They ducked when they glimpsed Lucinda backing out. Then, in a moment, her car came around and down the hill on the street below, heading for the village with the plastic bag, delivering, hopefully, a vital key to the identity of the strange neighbors-certainly Lucinda might notice her neighbor drop a flowerpot and, already curious and entangled in the mystery of who these people were, would of course hike on down at the first opportunity, and fetch the possible evidence.