Cat Playing Cupid

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Joe thought she must not have involved Mike in trying to find Carson or he would have gone into the department and read the file then. Maybe because Mike worked for the federal courts, his reading of the file might have presented a conflict of interest somewhere down the line? So Mike had deliberately kept his distance from the ongoing investigation? He watched Mike turn back to Kathleen's notes.

  Lindsey told Kathleen that she'd known Nina Gibbs only casually, that because of Gibbs's and Chappell's partnership, they had attended the same functions, that Nina had been friendly on some occasions but withdrawn on others; in short, that they'd not been close. Joe was so intent on the notes about the Chappell & Gibbs partnership agreement that he didn't notice he was digging his claws into Mike's shoulder until Mike swore and pushed him away.

  It took him a few minutes to get positioned on the pillow again, drawing a stern look from Flannery. According to the partnership agreement, if either partner became incapacitated, could not or would not participate as a working member of the firm, the court was to dissolve the company after a year, and the assets were to be sold. When Chappell didn't show in the allotted time, the firm was sold, Ray Gibbs received half the proceeds, and Chappell's mother the other half. Chappell & Gibbs had had a sound business, showing healthy annual profits, and there seemed to be no reason for either partner to have wanted out.

  A recent notation at the bottom of the yellow sheet, written by Max Harper just a few months ago, said that Ray Gibbs had divorced Nina, who, as far as the department knew, had not reappeared, and that Gibbs and Ryder Wolf were living together, dividing their time between a San Francisco condo and an apartment on Dolores, in the village.

  Finished with reading the memos, Mike set the file aside and leaned back among the pillows, lost in thought. From the look on his thin face, Joe guessed he was thinking not about Carson Chappell but about Lindsey; he sat stroking Joe so sensuously that Joe twitched and stared at him and backed away, his retreat jerking Mike from his reverie.

  But it was some time before Mike rose to extinguish the fire. Joe, yawning, padded down to curl up against Rock, receiving a long, wet lick across his ears and nose. He'd grown almost used to dog spit, but soon his wet fur began to feel chilly. As he burrowed deeper against Rock to get warm, he wondered how long it would be before they had an ID on the Oregon body, wondered whether the Oregon investigators were thorough enough to come up with a sample of the DNA.

  But DNA to match what?

  Was there, among the evidence the department had retained on Chappell, any item belonging to the killer that would produce the needed match to DNA found in Oregon? And, he wondered, when forensics began work on the body from the Pamillon ruins, could they get a match on that DNA? Would the lab find anything that might link that body to the Oregon corpse?

  But why was he chasing after phantoms? Why was he so fixated on some relationship between two bodies that had lain, for so many years, some five hundred miles apart?

  Well, he'd have his first look at the Pamillon grave in the morning, Joe thought, drifting off to sleep. And who knew what he and Dulcie and Kit would find?

  He'd barely closed his eyes when he blinked suddenly awake, staring into the first light of dawn filtering in through the accordion shades. Rolling over, he looked at the clock-and came wide awake. Six bells. Dulcie would pitch a fit. He'd said he'd meet her and Kit before daylight-it was a long run up the hills to the Pamillon estate. Padding lightly across the bed, trying not to wake Mike, and only momentarily waking Rock, who sighed and rolled over, Joe fled down the hall, up the stairs to Clyde 's study, and onto the desk. Leaping to a rafter, he was through his cat door and into his tower-and smack into the stern faces of two scowling lady cats.

  There they sat, chill and austere, coolly assessing him, their paws together, their ears at half-mast, regarding him as they would a rude and misbehaving kitten.

  "Overslept?" Dulcie said. Her sleek, brown-striped tabby coat was immaculately groomed, every hair in place, her green eyes piercing him. Beside her, Kit's long tortoiseshell fur was every which way, as if she'd had no time to groom. Kit looked at him just as impatiently as Dulcie had, lashing her fluffy tail.

  He thought of all kinds of excuses: that he'd overslept because he wasn't used to sleeping in the guest room, wasn't used to sleeping with a stranger whose snores were different from Clyde 's. But neither lady looked patient enough to listen to the shortest explanation, their twin stares said, We've been waiting an hour. The sun's nearly up! Come on, Joe. Move it!

  Sheepishly he slipped past them and out through the tower window to the shingled roof and took off fast across the rooftops, Dulcie and Kit running beside him.

  At Ocean Avenue they scrambled down a honeysuckle vine, crossed the empty eastbound lane, and turned to race up Ocean's wide, grassy median beneath the dark shelter of its eucalyptus and cypress trees, heading for the open hills, heading for the unidentified grave.

  12

  A BOVE THE RACING CATS, the Molena Point hills rose green with new grass, their emerald curves bright against heavy gray clouds; the damp grass soaked the cats' paws and fur as they raced ever higher above the village. If a cat had wings, Dulcie thought, running beside Joe and Kit, we'd fly over the hills, we'd see all our haunts below us, see all our world laid out…The scattered gardens and the dark oak woods, the red roofs of Casa Capri where those helpless old people were murdered. Janet Jeannot's studio, burned down when she was killed. We'd see Mama's house where I played lost kitty to spy on her crooked son, we'd see all the houses we've tossed, finding evidence. And just up there, she thought, pausing and rearing up to look, I'd see the broom bushes where Joe and I first met, where the moment we stood so close, face-to-face, after I'd watched him in the village, the moment he was so close to me, I knew that I loved him. And there above us, she thought, swerving closer to Joe through the fresh, damp grass, there where the ruins rise up like broken towers, there's where Charlie shot the man who kidnapped her.

  Soon their paws pounded through the rubble of broken stone walls where they'd once seen a cougar, the beautiful prowling cougar that might have eaten them. The cougar, Dulcie thought, glancing at Kit, who so enchanted the tattercoat that she touched him while he slept-and then ran like hell.

  Up the last steep incline, racing up, they stopped at the foot of the first garden wall, broken and rough, a relic of jagged stone, beyond which the old house rose up among its tangles of half-dead oak trees. All three cats were thinking of what they would find, of the human body, lost and forgotten, a forgotten soul all alone among the decaying buildings.

  Weeds grew tangled among old and dying bushes, crowding against the sides of the rambling, two-story mansion. At the front of the great house, where walls had crumbled away, the rooms stood open to the world like a stage, revealing peeling wallpaper and broken, moldering furniture: the hoary set of a macabre theatrical production that seemed about to begin, that waited for them, chill and silent-then the off-key blather of a house finch broke the spell, and from the fields beyond, the bright crystal song of a meadowlark. Then the lark's song was rudely hushed by the harsh cawing of a crow that perched ahead of them on the mossy roof, staring belligerently, his bright glare keenly accusing, his raucous voice scolding indignantly the presence of invading cats.

  Rearing up, Joe eyed the big black bird. "You thought all the cats left here? You're telling us to go, too? Too bad, buddy. Come on down if you don't like the drill. We'll put an end to your misery."

  Dulcie smiled. "Count me out. I'd as soon eat vulture." The crow cawed rudely. Kit studied him, lashing her fluffy tail as if she would surely eat him. But then, forgetting the nervy bird, she raced away toward the back of the mansion, toward the kitchen and the old cellars and the grotto that was their destination. Joe and Dulcie followed.

  Paying attention to Willow 's directions as Charlie had repeated them, moving past the kitchen and around the house among tangles of broken walls and overgrown bushes, they trotted under t
all, dirty windows that had once sparkled with candlelight and with flickering flames from the hearth.

  Rounding a jutting wall, they came to the small terrace sheltered between two wings of the house, a space just large enough for a bit of garden, a moss-covered stone bench, and, perhaps at one time, an outdoor tea table and chairs, furniture that would long since have rusted away or been destroyed by storms. The terrace bricks were dark with decades of dirt and overgrown with moss. On two sides of the sheltered terrace were raised planting beds but on the third, against the house, a sinkhole opened into a crumbled cellar.

  Nearer them, flanking the terrace, a weedy garden plot had been freshly dug into, the disturbed earth crisscrossed with paw prints.

  As Joe and Dulcie stood looking, and scenting the earth, at the side of the terrace Kit looked into the house through cracked French doors, pressing her nose to the grimy glass. Within lay an old-fashioned bedchamber that had once been elegant. She could see a smooth stone fireplace, a cream-colored Victorian bed, a toppled dresser, a matching dressing table and little chair, and a carved dressing screen that lay fallen against the rotting silk bedspread. The bed's silk canopy hung in shreds as delicate as spiderwebs. Kit imagined an elegant woman wrapped in a diaphanous dressing gown, coming out into the garden to sip tea among the ferns and flowers where, now, the planter beds held only weeds, dead leaves, and an overgrown jasmine that had tangled itself over dead bushes.

  Dulcie joined her, and the lady cats were still a moment, filled with dreams of being human ladies, Dulcie dreaming of silk and velvet garments and cashmere wraps, as she had dreamed all her life. Not until Joe huffed softly did the two give up their fantasies, and the cats began to dig in the flower bed where the earth had already been dug, Joe and Dulcie carefully pawing away the rotted leaves and earth so as not to disturb the frail bones that surely lay beneath-but Kit, in her enthusiasm, kicked out earth like a dog.

  Joe stopped her. "You're destroying evidence. You know better."

  She hung her head.

  It was Dulcie, going slowly, with gentle paws, who soon stroked something small and rigid. She stopped digging, and delicately brushed away the earth until, at their feet, lay little dark bones clean of flesh and stained brown by the earth, seeming as frail as the bones of a long-dead bird.

  The sight of a human hand so diminished and helpless sickened Dulcie. She turned away and sat down, her head down, her ears down, her heart feeling empty.

  This was not the first human grave they'd ever found, and the other graves had upset her even more, for they had held the bones of little children. That memory had stayed with her in nightmares, and now it returned again, to leave her shivering.

  Why does this upset me so? The bones of animals don't bother me, the bones of rats and mice or of a dead deer in the forest, they are just natural bones.

  But a dead human is nothing like a dead animal. The remains of a dead human should be treated with respect, should not be hidden and abandoned. A human body without proper burial, a proper marker, without ceremony and closure, is a tragedy of disrespect. As if that's all there is to a human, these moldering bones, and nothing more at all.

  Seeing her distress, Joe pressed close to her and licked her ear, his silver coat gleaming in the slant of early morning sun. Dulcie's green eyes were filled with mystery. "Were cats meant to find this grave?" she whispered. "First the ferals found it. And then we came…Were we meant to come here?"

  Joe just looked at her. He didn't like that kind of question. He began to dig again, carefully but steadily, until he had uncovered the side of the skull and then a line of spine defining the throat. He tried to work as carefully as he knew the coroner would; and soon his digging paw revealed the outer rim of the shoulder. Joe had begun to uncover the arm when suddenly he stopped.

  Dulcie and Kit moved closer and the three cats stood transfixed, their eyes on the frail wrist-on the bracelet that circled the wrist, still half buried in earth. It was a wide gold band embossed with the image of a cat. A rearing cat, just as Willow had described, a cat holding out its front paw as if beseeching, or perhaps commanding.

  "Where is the other cat?" Dulcie whispered. " Willow said-"

  "On the lintel," Kit said. "There, over the French doors to the bedchamber. Same cat, with its paw out."

  Who was this woman, so fond of cats that she wore a feline signet? That she had the same cat carved over her bedchamber? If that was her bedchamber, if this wasn't a stranger buried here.

  But a stranger whose bracelet showed the same cat as on the lintel? Not likely.

  At last they covered up the poor, vulnerable body, and with careful strokes they roughed up the loose earth until they had destroyed all the paw prints-their own, and those of the ferals.

  "One thing for sure," Dulcie said, "we can't report the body-the department knows there are cats up here. Those guys are already too curious since seeing the ferals attack Charlie's kidnappers."

  "Why do we have to report it?" Kit said. "Who knows how long that body's been here? What difference…?"

  Joe and Dulcie turned to look at her. "Someone," Dulcie said sternly, "wants to know what happened to this woman."

  "But what about the book?" Kit said. "The book Willow found? Maybe that will tell us." And the tattercoat leaped across the garden toward the dark fissure where the wall had caved into the cellar.

  "Don't, Kit!" Dulcie cried. "Don't go down-" But Kit had already disappeared into the dark hole among the fallen stones-and before Joe could snatch Dulcie back she had leaped after her, disappearing in the blackness. Joe was poised at the brink, ready to go down, or haul them out, when with considerable thrashing they emerged again dragging a small, heavy-looking box between them.

  It was made of dark wood, and when they had pawed open the lid to reveal a leather packet, then had clawed open the packet, they found inside a package wrapped in frail and yellowed cloth. They could see where Willow had unwrapped the thin linen and then rewrapped it, where the cloth was folded differently, revealing darker creases. Several white cat hairs were caught in the folds. There were no markings on the box, or on the leather packet.

  Lifting out the wrapped book, they laid it on paper, which they had spread on the bricks. The leather cover was old and dry, and was embossed in gold: Folktales of Speaking Cats and a History of Certain Rare Encounters.

  "No one," Dulcie hissed angrily, "no one should write about speaking cats." The author's name was Thomas Bewick. What cruel impulse had made this man reveal their secret? Why had he done such a thing?

  But despite its content, the book was frail and beautiful, and Dulcie's touch was feather soft as she turned the dry, yellowed pages.

  At the beginning of each chapter was the color etching of a cat, each with a motto or homily.

  She speaks of a world beneath the meadow, where the sky is greener.

  They prowl the night, listening. And to whom will they tell their secrets?

  The cats read in silence, scanning the passages, and soon Dulcie's tension eased and she began to purr: These stories were only myths and folktales, all were innocent enough, folktales about magical cats written in a fairy-tale manner that no human would take for fact. That was all the book would be to the uninitiated, a collection of fairy tales, stories about cats who spoke to kings, cats who vanished into cavernous worlds beneath the earth, cats who led lost children from war-torn medieval cities. Indeed, their own ancient heritage lay between these pages, but so well disguised that few humans would dream there was truth to the stories.

  Dulcie and Kit were transfixed, but the tales made Joe edgy, turned him increasingly irritable; he didn't have the temperament for this, his yellow eyes burned with impatience.

  It was enough for Joe to live in the here and now, he didn't need fairy tales to explain himself. The world could take him or not, as it chose, and to hell with the past, he preferred to leave all foolish conjecture to dreamers-and Dulcie preferred Joe just as he was. A tough, practical tomcat who faced
the world straight on. A four-legged cop who hid very well the tender streak deep within.

  "And what," the tomcat said, staring at the gold-embossed volume, "what do we do with this? There's nothing safe to do with it, Dulcie. Except bury it again. It's too heavy to carry, and we can't let someone find it."

  Dulcie looked dismayed. "We can't leave it here, it will rot."

  "It hasn't rotted yet."

  "It's old and frail, Joe. I don't think-"

  "If we carry and drag it down the hills, we'll rip the leather, tear the pages. And if we haul it in the box, we'll need our little cat spines adjusted."

  She sat down and washed a front paw.

  She wanted this book, she wanted to read the rest of it. Wanted to look into the back pages, wanted…

  Joe Grey sat down beside her and licked her whiskers. "I guess if you want it that bad," he said softly, "Charlie can get it for us."

  Dulcie looked at him uncertainly. "Charlie hasn't been up here since she was kidnapped. She doesn't come here anymore."

  "She will for this. She will if we nudge her. She has to be wondering about the book. She has to be as curious as we were. Do you think, after Willow told her there was a book about speaking cats, that she isn't wild to see it?"

  Dulcie looked at him bleakly. "Maybe she won't want to come up here, where she shot that man. She's already worried about how to report this grave. Maybe-"

  "Leave it to me," Joe said, smiling a sly, tomcat smile. "I have a trade for Charlie. A trade that will make her happy to do what we ask. She'll fetch the book, and she'll do it gladly."

  13

  C HARLIE STOOD at the top of the cliff watching the sea, thinking about little Sage. It was nearly noon and the tide was coming in, the waves crashing and foaming against the rocks far below, turning them glistening black; the surf's wild and gigantic power, the vastness of the sea and of the earth itself, made a creature as small and hurt as Sage seem to her all the more helpless.