She had no notion what had taken him away so suddenly. She did not feel relieved, only apprehensive. When he didn't appear again she let herself out, slipping open the laundry-room door. Listening to the smallest boy's giggles from the kitchen, she engaged the push-button lock, quietly shut the door behind her, and headed up the street for her car.
But approaching her own car in the black night where she'd parked it beneath a maple tree, the Toyota's pale, hulking shape seemed suddenly possessed, as if the cat watched from beneath it. She could not approach. Fear of the unnatural cat gripped her. She turned away from her own car and headed downhill toward the village-a coward's response.
She'd have to get rid of the Toyota. She couldn't bear that the cat knew this car. Burdened by her heavy coat, she stumped along down toward Ocean Avenue, telling herself she wasn't fleeing from the cat, that she was going down to Binnie's Italian for a nice hot supper and a beer, for a plate of Binnie's good spaghetti, told herself that once she was fortified with spaghetti and a couple of beers she'd enjoy the little climb back up the hill to her waiting car, never mind that the coat weighed a ton. Making her way down toward the village, she fought the urge to look behind her, certain that if she looked, the cat would be there on the dark sidewalk, following her, his white paws and white markings moving like disjointed parts of a puzzle, his yellow eyes intent on her, a beast impossible to believe in-and impossible to escape.
2
Early-morning sun slanted into the Damen backyard, illuminating the ragged lawn, picking out each bare patch of earth where busy canine paws had been digging. Sunlight sharply defined the ragged weeds pushing up among straggling rosebushes along the back fence. Warm sunshine washed across the chaise lounge, where the tomcat lay scowling with anger. Having been rudely awakened from a deep and happy dream, he stared irritably at his human housemate.
Clyde Damen had only recently awakened himself, had brought his first cup of coffee out to sip while sitting on the back steps. He was unwashed, his dark hair resembling an untidy squirrel's nest, his cheeks black with stubble. He wore ancient, frayed jogging shorts above hairy legs, and a ragged, washed-out T-shirt. In the cat's opinion, he looked like he'd slept in a Dumpster. Joe Grey observed him with disgust. "You want to run that by again?" The cat's look was incredulous. "You woke me up to tell me what? You want me to do what?" Clyde glared at him.
"I can't believe you would even think such a thing," Joe said. "Maybe, because I was awakened so unkindly, I didn't hear correctly. What I thought I heard was an amazingly inane suggestion."
"Come on, Joe. You heard correctly." Clyde sucked at his coffee. "Why the indignation? What's wrong with a little charity? I hadn't thought you'd be so incredibly narrow- minded." He sipped his brew, sucking loudly, and scratched his hairy knee. "I think it's a great idea. If you'd try it, you might find the project interesting."
Joe sighed. He'd had a disappointing night anyway. He didn't need to be awakened from his much-needed sleep to this kind of stupidity. "Why me? Why lay your idiot idea on me? Let one of the other cats do it. They won't know they're being used."
He'd returned home last night dismayed at his own ineptitude, and now he wasn't even allowed to sleep out his sulk. He'd been deeply and sweetly down into delightful feline dreams when Clyde came banging out of the house, picked him up, jerking him cruelly from slumber, and laid this incredibly rude suggestion on him. The next instant, of course, Clyde had yelped and dropped him, blood welling up across the back of his hand.
Joe had immediately curled up again and closed his eyes. Clyde had sat down on the step and stared at his hand, where the blood ran wet and dark. But then, guileless, and with incredible bad manners, Clyde made the suggestion again.
"Bloodied hand serves you right," Joe said now. He gave Clyde a narrow, amused cat smile. "I don't come barging into the bedroom waking you out of a sound sleep to tell you how to live your life-not that you couldn't use a little advice."
"I only suggested…"
He looked Clyde over coldly. "I can't believe you'd lay that kind of rude, thoughtless request on me. I thought we were friends. Buddies."
Joe knew quite well that the idea hadn't originated with Clyde. And that was what made him really mad.
Cat and human stared at each other as, around them, the morning reeked of sun-warmed grass and rang with birdsong, mostly the off-key blather of a house finch. Joe smoothed his shoulder with a pink tongue. Unlike his human housemate, he was beautifully groomed, his short coat as sleek and gleaming as gray velvet, his muscled shoulders heavy and solid, his handsome white paws, white chest and throat, and the white strip down his nose as pristinely clean as new snow, his eyes as deeply golden as slanted twin moons.
He knew he was a handsome cat, he knew what a mirror was for. He knew that look of adulation in his lady's green eyes, too. But, thinking of Dulcie at that moment, of her beautiful tabby face and soft, peach-tinted ears, he was filled with her betrayal. Complete betrayal. It was Dulcie who had put Clyde up to this insanity, it was Dulcie and her human housemate, Wilma Getz, who had hatched this plan.
Irritably he flicked an ear toward the off-key cacophony of the house finch. Didn't those birds know the difference between sharp and flat? He didn't like to think about Dulcie's perfidy. Angry, hurt by her betrayal, he kept his gaze on Clyde.
Clyde shook a tangle of dark hair out of his eyes. "Just tell me what's wrong with the idea. The venture would be charitable. It would be fun, and it would do you good. Help you practice a little kindness, increase your community awareness."
"What do I need with community awareness?" Joe sighed, enunciating slowly and clearly, his yellow eyes wide with innocent amazement. "Let me get this straight. You want me to join a pat-the-kitty group. You want me to visit an old people's home. You are asking me to become part of show-and-tell for the doddering elderly." He regarded Clyde closely. "Are you out of your feeble human mind?"
"Dulcie thinks it's a good idea."
"Dulcie thinks it's a good idea because it was her idea." Joe dug his claws into the chaise cushion. Sometimes Dulcie lost all sense of proportion. "Do you really think that I'm going to allow a battalion of bedridden old people to prod and poke me, to call me 'ootsy wootsy kitty,' and drool all over me?"
"Come on, Joe. You're making a big deal. If you'd just give it-"
Joe's look blazed so wild that Clyde stopped speaking and retreated behind a swill of coffee. The cat treated him to an icy smile. "Would you submit yourself to such amazing indignities? Turn yourself into an object of live-animal therapy?"
Clyde settled back against the steps. "You really are a snob. What makes you think those old folks are so disgusting? You'll be old someday. A flea-bitten, broken-down bag of cat bones with a dragging belly, and who's going to be kind to you?"
"You will. Same as you're kind to those two disreputable old dogs."
"Of course I'm kind to them, they're sweet old dogs. But you-when you get old I'll probably dump you at the animal pound."
"Or gas me under the exhaust of that junk-heap Packard you insist on driving."
"That Packard is a collector's model: it's worth a bundle of cash, and it's in prime condition." Clyde regarded Joe quietly. "Those old people get lonely, Joe. I'm not asking you to dedicate the rest of your life. Just a little kindness, a few hours a week. Some of those old people don't have any family, no one to visit them, no one to talk to or to care what happens to them."
Joe washed his left front paw.
"Don't you read the papers? Animal therapy is the latest thing. If those old people can visit with a warm, healthy animal, hold a cuddly dog or cat on their lap, that kind of relationship can really ease their depression, bring a lot of happiness into their dull lives. There've been cases where-"
"Cuddly? You think I'm cuddly?"
Clyde shrugged. "I don't. But their eyesight isn't too good. You're about as cuddly as a dead cactus. But hey, those old folks aren't choosy. If you could make a few of them happy-"
"What do I care if they're happy? What possible good can their happiness do me?"
"Just a little charity, Joe. A little love." Clyde scratched his dark, stubbled chin.
"Love? You want me to love them?"
"Can't you even imagine doing something nice for others? If you'd stop thinking about yourself all the time- and stop playing detective, following that damned cat burglar. That's another thing. This whole cat burglar bit. I don't like it that you were eavesdropping on Captain Harper, listening to classified police information."
"Classified? What's classified? The burglaries were in the paper. And I wasn't eavesdropping. You and Harper were playing poker. You're afraid I'll get a line on that woman before the cops do. And who knows, maybe I will. Make Harper's secret undercover surveillance look like a parade down Main Street."
He washed his right paw. "Who knows, maybe I can pass along a little information to Harper. Would he object to that? He hasn't objected in the past; I don't remember any complaints when Dulcie and I solved the Beckwhite murder, or turned up the evidence on Janet Jeannot's killer."
Clyde's dark, sleepy eyes stared into Joe's slitted yellow ones. "I'm not going to discuss that. You go off on these big ego trips. Like you were the only one who ever solved a murder. And if I tell you that stuff's dangerous, that you and Dulcie could get yourselves killed or maimed, you go ballistic, pitch a first-class tantrum."
Clyde stared into his empty coffee cup. "Couldn't you at least volunteer a couple afternoons a week? If your best friend likes the idea, couldn't you try? Try giving something back to the community?"
Joe's eyes widened to full moons. "Give something back to the community? Talk about limp-wristed dogoodism. Why should I give anything to some community? I'm a cat, not a human. What did this village ever-"
"May I point out that Molena Point is an unusually nice place for a cat to live? That you're lucky to have landed here?" Clyde sucked at his empty cup and moved his position on the step, following the shifting path of the sun. "How many California towns can offer you a veritable cat Eden? Where else are there endless woods and hills and gardens to hunt in, and even the street traffic is in your favor. Molena Point drivers are unbelievably slow and careful. Everyone takes great pains, Joe, not to run over wandering cats. Even the tourists are thoughtful. You want to move back into San Francisco's alleys, dodging trucks, avoiding hopheads and drunks? You try living in Sacramento or downtown L.A., see how long before you end up as pressed cat meat."
Joe glared.
"You fell into paradise when you landed in Molena Point. It would seem to me you'd be anxious to pay your dues."
No comment. The gray tomcat washed his shoulder.
"To say nothing of the free gourmet food you village cats indulge in behind Jolly's Deli. Where else are you going to be served free caviar, smoked Puget Sound salmon, imported Brie? You may not have noticed, Joe, but between Jolly's gourmetic freebies and the rabbits and mice you gorge on, you're getting a sizable paunch."
"I wouldn't talk about paunch, the shape you're in." Joe looked him over coldly. His stub tail beat so hard against the cushions that Clyde imagined an invisible tail lashing: the tail that was no longer a part of the tomcat's anatomy.
"Why not give it one visit, just to see what those old people are like?"
"I don't see you visiting the feeble elderly. And since when are you so concerned about Molena Point's old folks?"
"If you'll try just one pet visiting day, I'll treat you to the best filet in Molena Point, delivered to the house sizzling hot."
"Not for all the filets in the village will I be crammed into a bus beside a bunch of yapping stink-a-poos scratching and lifting their legs, hauled away to an institution, locked inside rooms that smell like a hospital, rammed by wheelchairs, shoved into the laps of strangers to be poked and prodded, people I never saw before and don't want to see, people smelling of Vick's VapoRub and wet panties." Joe's eyes burned huge and angry. "Get them a teddy bear. Get them a stuffed cat- one of those cute furry life-size kitties you see on the shelf in the drugstore, but leave yours truly alone." He turned his back, curled up in the warm sunshine, and closed his eyes.
But Joe's reluctance would come to nothing, his stubborn negativism would soon register zero. When soft little Dulcie set her mind to it and turned that sweet green gaze on him, his blustering tomcat resolve would begin to melt. Before another two days had passed, the gray tomcat would find himself enduring with amazing patience the palsied stroking of the old folks' frail, wrinkled hands-and soon would find himself studying the Casa Capri Retirement Villa with intense interest, trying to understand what was not right within that seemingly gentle, cosseting home for aged villagers.
3
The Molena Point Library, deserted at midnight, was so silent that the book-lined walls echoed with Dulcie's purrs; the little brindle cat lay sprawled on a reference table across a tangle of newspapers. Around her the dim, empty rooms stretched away into mysterious caverns that now belonged to her alone. At night the library's shadowed sanctuaries were hers; she shared her space with no one.
There was no hustle of hurrying feet, no hasty staff, no too-bright lights, no busy patrons, no swarms of village children herded by their teachers in barely controlled and giggling tangles among the brightly colored books. In the daytime library Dulcie was a social beast, wandering amiably among sneakers and nyloned legs, receiving almost more stroking and admiring words than she could handle. She was, officially, the Molena Point Library Cat, appointed so by all but one of the library staff. Library cats were the latest trend in bibliothecal public relations; in the daytime, Dulcie was Molena Point Library's official greeter, collector of new patrons, head of PR. The one librarian who disapproved of her was a distinct minority. Her recent attempts to oust Dulcie had met with villagewide resistance. Through petitions and public hearings, Dulcie's position was now solid and secure. She had seen her own picture in the official newsletter of the Library Cat Society along with pictures of countless other similarly appointed feline dignitaries. She was, in the daytime, a busy social creature.
But at night, she no longer need pretend to dumb ignorance, at night she could do just as she chose, she had only to paw a few selected volumes from the shelves and, voila: she could follow any mystery, travel anywhere, entertain herself with any kind of dream.
Beyond the dark library windows, the village streets were empty. Oak branches twisted black against the moon-washed clouds, their gnarled shadows reaching in across the table and across the pile of open newspapers. Each paper was neatly affixed to a wooden rod by which it could be hung on a rack. Dulcie had, with some difficulty, lifted each from the rack in her teeth and leaped with it to the table, spread it out, taking care not to tear the pages.
Occasionally a light raced across the windows and she listened to a lone car whish down the street. When it had passed, her ears were filled again with the crashing of waves six blocks away against the Molena Point cliffs; and she could hear, from the roof above, a lone oak twig scraping against the overlapping clay tiles of the low, Mediterranean building.
None of the newspapers she had retrieved was a local publication; each had come from one or another California coastal town south of Molena Point. For hours she had studied these, piecing together a history of the cat burglar. Turning the pages with her claws, trying to leave no telltale puncture mark in the soft paper, she found the burglar to be both a puzzle and a grand joke. The woman was completely brazen, walking calmly into unlocked houses in the middle of the day, walking out again loaded down with jewelry, cash, small electronic equipment, and objets d'art. She had robbed some forty residences in a dozen coastal towns. This had to be the same woman who was operating now in Molena Point; though the local paper had made no mention of the cat connection. But Joe Grey was certain of his facts, Joe had a private source of information not open to the general citizen.
Unlike Joe, Dulcie found the woman's methods highly amusing. To use a cat for
cover, and to commit her robberies with such chutzpah, tickled her senses, made her laugh.
Though she was stirred by other emotions, too. Just as the antics of a brazen jay were amusing yet made her lust to kill the creature, so the cat burglar's brash nerve, while it entertained her, made her long to track and pounce.
Dulcie's own sharp, predatory lusts were as nothing compared to Joe's interest. He'd been on the trail of the cat burglar for weeks-he was fascinated by the woman, and with typical tomcat ego he was enraged by a burglar who used a cat as her alibi.
Dulcie rolled over in a shaft of moonlight and batted at a moth that had gotten trapped in the room. It kept coming back to the light, darting mindlessly through the beam. She supposed she ought to put the newspapers back in the rack, but that was hard work. If she left them, Wilma would collect them from the table in the morning and put them away; Wilma always picked up after the late-evening patrons who straggled out leaving a mess when the library closed at nine. Wilma might be gray-haired, but she was a whirlwind when it came to work; she could work circles around these younger librarians.
Dulcie's housemate walked several miles a day, worked out at the gym once a week, and could still hit the bull's-eye consistently at the target range, a skill she had acquired in her profession as a parole officer. Wilma's professional interest in helping others had made her a natural to help with the Pet-a-Pet program.
Day after tomorrow would mark their third visit to the retirement center-though Dulcie hadn't told Wilma all that she'd learned there. Best to keep some things to herself, at least for now.
There was, within the sedate and ordered Casa Capri, more going on than the little everyday problems of the cosseted elderly. She hadn't told Wilma the stories she'd heard; she didn't want to upset her. And she wasn't telling Joe, either, but for a different reason.
Cat Raise the Dead Page 2