Cat Seeing Double

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  The instant Clyde parked, the three cats had leaped out of the open convertible and streaked across the empty eastbound lane hoping not to be noticed on the dark street. Slipping into the crowd, swerving between shoes and pant cuffs and silk-clad ankles they stormed up the far side of the giant eucalyptus. Concealing themselves among its leafy branches, they looked down on the crowd below, massed in the falling evening among the sheltering trees.

  "Oh," Dulcie whispered. "Oh," said the kit. The faces of the villagers were lighted from beneath by candles and torches like the faces of children carrying votive candles in solemn procession. The scene put Dulcie in mind of some ancient woodland wedding performed in a simpler time, perhaps a Celtic ceremony in a far and magical past.

  The minute Clyde took his place beside the groom, Wilma began her measured walk up the grassy aisle, her step dictated not by wedding music, for there was none, but by the rhythm of the sea that broke some blocks away on the sandy shore, the surf's eternal hush deep and sustaining. Behind Wilma, the bride approached on the arm of Dallas Garza between the flickering lights, her dress gleaming white. "She'll have sponged it," Dulcie whispered.

  Some of the wedding guests sported bandages; but only Cora Lee French was in the hospital. "For observation," Clyde had said. Cora Lee's lack of a spleen after her attack and surgery last spring prompted her doctor to keep close watch on her. Very likely, the cats thought, Cora Lee was fully prepared to enjoy the wedding secondhand from her friends' eager descriptions and from the plates of wedding cake and party food that would be carried over to the hospital.

  As Charlie, Wilma, and Dallas took their places, Dulcie felt a tear slide down her whiskers. The ceremony was simple. At, "who gives this bride to be wed?" when Detective Garza led Charlie forward to stand beside Captain Harper, Joe Grey muttered a little prayer that in all the confusion Clyde hadn't lost the rings. Only when Clyde slipped his hand in his coat pocket and the ring boxes appeared, did the cats relax, watching with fascination as the traditional words to love and to cherish formed a deep and solemn promise. Dulcie's eyes were indeed misty. Looking down through the branches, the cats watched Max Harper place the gold band on Charlie's finger. As Charlie slipped Max's ring on, another tear slid down Dulcie's nose, a tear that no ordinary cat could shed. Joe looked at her intently. "What's to cry about? This is the start of their new life."

  "A tomcat wouldn't understand. All females cry at weddings, it's in the genes."

  But in truth all three cats were touched by this human ritual. The kit snuffled into her whiskers; and as the villagers gathered around the bride and groom kissing and hugging them, the cats moved higher up the great tree, easing out along a wide branch through the softly rustling foliage, where they had a wider view of the village street. As Max and Charlie mingled with their friends, and someone's CD player brought alive the forties swing that Charlie and Max loved, Ryan and her Uncle Dallas left the party hurrying in the direction of the police station.

  "To have a look at the boy," Joe said. "To see if Ryan does know him."

  "That seems so strange," Dulcie replied, "to think that she saw him all that far away, in San Andreas."

  Earlier, at the bombed church, coming down from the roof and allowing Clyde to carry them to the car, they had crowded gratefully onto Ryan's lap, even Joe Grey with no show of macho independence.

  "Do you mind holding them? I think they're scared."

  "We're all scared. They can comfort me." Ryan had hugged the cats, crushing them gently together; they had ridden the few blocks to the wedding like three furry prizes she might have won at some carnival booth, three rag animals held tight by a fearful little girl. "Does anyone know the boy?" Ryan said. "Know who he is?"

  Clyde turned to look at her. "Detective Davis thought she recognized him. I got the impression Garza might know him, but he wasn't saying much."

  "I might know him. Or he's a dead ringer for one of the boys hanging around the trailer, in San Andreas."

  "That would be pretty strange. I got the feeling he's local, that he might be involved with that last bust Harper made, that meth lab up the valley. I think the guy they sent up had a kid."

  "I think it's the same boy, Clyde."

  He looked over at her. "Was there an old man with him, up there?"

  She shook her head. "I saw only the boy. Tell me again how you knew about the bomb, what made you run shouting for everyone to get out. Through a phone call?"

  "I'd gone into the church with my phone in my suit pocket, and someone said it made a lump. I went back to the car to leave it. When it rang I wasn't going to answer, I don't know what made me pick up. It was a woman, whispering. Said there was a bomb, that a boy on the roof had the trigger, a garage-door opener." Clyde shrugged. "You know the rest. I didn't dare not believe her."

  Clyde was, Joe thought, improving his lying skills. At least he had, apparently, convinced Ryan.

  Now, below the cats, the bride and groom drifted away among a tangle of friends, heading for the party tables. Only Wilma remained beneath the eucalyptus tree lingering in the grassy circle. Looking up, she spoke softly-anyone who knew Wilma Getz knew that it was not unusual to hear her talk to her cats.

  "Come on, Kit. I'm going to the hospital."

  The kit's eyes widened.

  "Taking Cora Lee some party food."

  Kit scooted down at once, so eagerly that she nearly fell backward into Wilma's arms. The cats knew the kit had been worried about the Creole woman. The two of them were fast friends. Though Cora Lee had no notion of the little cat's true nature, the kit was special to her. This last spring, they had spent six weeks onstage together charming their audiences. No actress and her protege can star together bringing down the house every night without forming an indestructible bond.

  Carrying the kit on her shoulder, Wilma headed away through the crowd. "I have a shopping bag in me car that should hide you, should get you into her room." Reaching her car, she turned so they could both look back, watching the bride and groom dancing the first dance in the westbound lane of Ocean, the tall, handsome couple laughing as their shoes scuffed on the rough asphalt.

  "They are happy," Wilma whispered. "Safe, Kit, thanks to you. Thanks to their guardian angel, they are safe and happy. Very, very happy."

  The kit smiled, and snuggled closer. How strange life was, how strange and amazing. She never knew, one moment to the next, what new wonder would fill the world around her, dazzling and challenging her-and sometimes terrifying her.

  The inside of the car smelled deliciously of the party food that Wilma was taking to Cora Lee. But as the kit settled down on the front seat beside her friend, extravagantly purring, neither she nor Wilma imagined that the day's events would not be the last ugliness to twist this weekend awry and leave its ugly mark.

  Descending the great eucalyptus tree, Dulcie and Joe Grey backed precariously down the slick bark below the branch line, slipping, dropping the last six feet, and headed directly across the street to the long buffet tables set up in front of the village shops.

  At the center table where bottles of champagne were being popped, Max and Charlie stood cutting the cake, exchanging bites, smearing white icing across each other's faces as the occasion was duly recorded by a dozen flashing cameras. The cats glanced at each other, purring. A gentleness filled the crowd, a gentleness in people's voices and in their slower movements, an extra kindliness washing over the village, born of the near-disaster.

  They saw Ryan and Dallas coming up the street, returning from the station where Ryan must have had a look at the young bomber. As she joined Charlie at a small table, Dallas stood conferring with Harper, then headed away toward the church to oversee the bomb team. And Harper himself headed quickly for the station, leaving Charlie to the first of the endless separations and delays that would accompany her life married to a cop. The cats trotted near them, to listen, settling down on the sidewalk between some potted geraniums.

  Ryan sat down, touching Charlie's hand. "
You look pale."

  "I'm fine. Was it the same boy?"

  "Same kid. Dallas knows him; he's Curtis Farger."

  "Son of the guy Max and Dallas busted?" Charlie said. "He's supposed to be down the coast with his mother. Maybe she's not too reliable."

  The trial of Curtis's father had ended just three weeks before. Gerrard Farger was doing six years on the manufacture of an illegal substance, and two years each on three counts of possession. The meth lab he'd put together had been in the woods below Molena Point, a shed behind a two-room cabin, the property roped off now with warning signs, and stinking so powerfully of drugs that it would likely have to be destroyed. Though the chemicals and lab equipment had been removed, the walls and floor and every fiber of the building still exuded fumes as lethal as cyanide.

  "I had a look at him through the one-way mirror," Ryan said. "When I was sure it was the same kid, Dallas took me on in. Kid looked at me like he'd never seen me. I told him I'd cleaned up my truck, found the cracker crumbs and Hershey wrappers in my tarp."

  "I'm missing a beat, here."

  Ryan laughed. "I didn't know what had happened in my truck, only that someone had been in it. That had to be on my way down from San Andreas, or that night after I got home. But then when I saw the kid… well, it fit. I asked him if he'd hitched a ride down from the mountains. He just stared at me. When I pushed him, he said, 'What of it, bitch? I don't weigh nothin'. How much gas could it take?'"

  Ryan shook her head. "Not a bit like the nice, polite, innocent kid he let me think he was, hanging around the Jakes job."

  "You're sure it's the same boy?"

  "The same. Same straight black hair, with a cowlick-big swirl on the left side. Same big bones, square-cut dirty nails. Same coal-black eyes and straight brows with those little scraggly hairs." Ryan gave Charlie a wry smile. "He was so eager and polite when he and his two friends showed up around the trailer.

  "And just now in jail, underneath his hateful stare and rude mouth, I think the kid was scared."

  "He should be scared," Charlie said. "He's in major trouble."

  "Dallas called Curtis's mother. She said the boy wasn't there right then, that he'd gone to a movie. A ten-year-old boy going to a movie alone, at this time of night? Dallas asked her what movie. She didn't know, said she'd forgotten what the kid told her. Said whatever was playing in town. That there was only one theater, and one screen. Said she guessed he'd be home by midnight." Ryan shook her head. "A ten-year-old kid running the streets at midnight. Dallas plans to go down in the morning, have a talk with her."

  Charlie nodded. "If that old man is Gerrard Farger's father-Curtis's grandfather… They've had a warrant out for him. Max and Dallas were sure the two ran the lab together, but when they busted Farger the old man was gone, not a trace. Now, if there's a connection to San Andreas, that's a whole new track to follow. We may not make it to Alaska."

  "I'm sorry."

  Charlie shook her head. "Whatever Max decides is okay. We can take the cruise later. That old man needs to be stopped. At the time of the drug raid, the second bedroom in the Farger cabin had been cleaned out, where he might have bunked with the boy. Nothing but a bare cot against the wall and an old mattress on the floor, and the kid's clothes. Juvenile officer picked those up after the bust, when he took me kid down to his mother. Not a sign of the old man, and during the trial Gerrard wouldn't say a word to incriminate his father."

  Ryan shrugged. "Nothing like family loyalty. Were they part of a bigger operation?"

  "Max doesn't think so. More of a family business," Charlie said wryly. "Farger apparently thought he could run a small operation without alerting the cops or the cartel."

  Ryan laughed. "Sooner or later the cartel would have known about it-would have destroyed the lab or taken it over, made Farger knuckle under and follow their orders." Both young women were very aware of the powerful Mexican drug cartel that operated in the Bay Area. "He's lucky Max made the bust, he's safer in jail. Was he farming marijuana too?"

  "DEA is investigating," Charlie said. The cartel used its meth profits to bankroll marijuana operations across the state-a behemoth of criminal activity as dark and invasive, in the view of law enforcement, as if the black death were creeping across California destroying families and taking lives. In the national forests and other remote areas, the marijuana patches were guarded by gunmen who shot to kill, so intent on protecting their crops that a deer hunter or a hiker venturing into the wrong area might never be heard from again.

  And the toxic waste from meth labs was dumped down storm drains so it went into the sea, or was poured into streams so it got into the water supply, or was poured on the ground where it could stay for years poisoning fields and killing wildlife. Whoever said doing meth didn't hurt anyone but the user didn't have a clue.

  "You are pale," Ryan said softly. "We shouldn't be talking about this stuff. You want to get out of the crowd, go somewhere quiet and lie down?"

  "I'm fine," Charlie said crossly. "I don't need to lie down."

  But she wasn't fine, she couldn't get over being scared. She'd thought she was okay until, walking up the grassy aisle, with all their friends, everyone she knew and cared about, standing like a wall to protect her, she kept imagining the grass exploding in front of Dallas and Wilma, exploding with all those people crowding close.

  She felt ice-cold again. Her hands began to shake.

  Ryan put her arm around her, hugging Charlie against her shoulder.

  Charlie shook her head. "I'm sorry. Delayed reaction."

  "I guess that's allowed. You don't have to be stoic and fearless just because you married a cop."

  "It would help."

  They looked at each other with perfect understanding; but they glanced up when Clyde and Wilma approached their table.

  Wilma was wrapped in a blue cashmere stole over her pale gown, against the night's chill. She carried a woven shopping bag that bulged and wriggled.

  Clyde carried two paper plates heaped with canapes and salads and sliced meats. As he set one in the center of the table and the other underneath, Joe and Dulcie slipped beneath the table; and from Wilma's shopping bag the kit hopped out, strolling purposefully under the table to claim her share.

  "Cora Lee's fine," Wilma said. "Apparently something hit her in the head, but no concussion. They want her overnight, though." When, early in the spring, Cora Lee had walked into the middle of a robbery and murder, she had been hit by such a blow to her middle that her spleen had ruptured and had to be removed. The dusky-skinned actress told them later she was terrified she would never sing again. But she had sung, the lead in the village's little theater production of Thorns of Gold. With the kit as impromptu costar during the entire run, the play had sold out every night.

  "Dallas is trying to get Curtis Farger remanded over to juvenile," Clyde said. "But since the fire, with their building gone, they're not eager to take any kids. Kids scattered all over, in temporary quarters, and not great security." He looked at Charlie. "Max would be smart to get a move on, before you decide to enjoy the cruise without him."

  "Maybe we'll just do a few days in San Francisco, and book the cruise for next spring." Their reservation at the St. Francis gave them three days in the city before boarding their liner for the inland passage. At the moment, that sounded pretty good to Charlie.

  "Can you cancel a cruise like that?" Wilma said. "Even Max…" She watched Charlie, frowning. She wanted her niece and Max to get on that ship and be gone, to be away from the Farger family.

  "Max knows someone," Charlie said. "When he made the reservations, that was part of the package, that if something urgent came up, we could cancel." She glanced beneath the table where the cats feasted, Joe and Dulcie eating fastidiously, the kit slurping so loudly that Ryan looked under too, and laughed.

  When the cats had demolished their quiche, seafood salads, rare roast beef, curried lamb, and wedding cake, they stretched out between the feet of their friends for a leisurely was
h, grooming thoroughly from whiskers to tail. They could have trotted over to the jail and had a look at Curtis Farger, but they were too full and comfortable. And Joe didn't think they'd hear much. Very likely Curtis had already been questioned as much as he could be, until a juvenile officer arrived in the morning to protect the kid's rights. Sleeking his whiskers with a damp paw, Joe Grey thought about the legal rights of young boys who set bombs to kill people.

  No one liked to believe that a ten-year-old child had intended, and nearly succeeded in, mass murder. In the eyes of the law, Curtis and his grandfather were innocent until proven guilty. But in Joe Grey's view they were both guilty until proven otherwise. If you attacked innocent people with all claws raking, you should know that your opponent would retaliate.

  Charlie said, "This afternoon at the church-before the bomb-I felt like I was nineteen again, so scared and giddy. And then after the bomb went off, it was… I wasn't nineteen anymore, couldn't remember ever having been so young." She chafed her hands together.

  "There was some reason," Ryan said, "some profound reason, why that bomb went off prematurely. What made the kid turn and run? What made him trip and fall? You couldn't see much under those overhanging trees. He was lucky he didn't break something, falling off that roof. Just bruises-and those scratches on his face from the branches." She looked at Clyde. "Do you think he would have set off the bomb if he hadn't fallen? Do you think he would have pressed that little button?"

  Clyde and Charlie and Wilma avoided looking at each other. All were thinking the same. Had no one seen Kit attack the boy?

  "The boy went to a lot of trouble," Clyde said, "to suddenly abandon the idea. Whether he made the bomb or the old man did, don't you think a ten-year-old would do what he was told to do? If the old man forced the kid to go up on the roof, if he threatened Curtis…"