Cat Raise the Dead

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  And then this morning when Wilma brought the kid in, little Dillon Thurwell, to tell him about the doll, neither Wilma nor the kid knew that Susan had called him with the same story. Neither Wilma nor the kid knew about the note; Mae Rose had found that hours after the two of them left Casa Capri yesterday afternoon, and Mae Rose had taken the note to Susan.

  He'd never known Wilma Getz to go off on a tangent. She'd worked her whole life in corrections and wasn't the kind to buy into some nut story. Unless Wilma herself was getting senile. On the phone, she'd said, "I guess it's all nonsense, Max. I know it sounds crazy-but you know that little niggling feeling? That ring of truth that's so hard to shake?"

  "Go on."

  "I saw Dillon take the doll from the closet, I could see clearly across the patio, from where I stood in the glass doors of the social room. I watched her slip inside, remove the lap desk, open it, and take out the doll. She shoved the desk back, hid the doll in her shirt, and made a dash out the door just as it started to rain. The cats…" She'd paused, stopped talking.

  "The cats? You started to say, what?"

  "Oh, that the cats were out in the rain, too. You know, the Pet-a-Pet cats."

  "So?"

  "I don't know-so they got wet. What time can I come in?"

  "Come on in," he had said, sighing. "I can give you a few minutes." He had hung up, poured another cup of coffee, and gotten some paperwork done. Not twenty minutes later, there was Wilma coming into the station with the kid. Threading their way back through the crowded squad room, Wilma herded the kid along, her hand on the little girl's shoulder, the child looking fascinated by all the uniforms, and looking scared.

  He'd poured coffee for Wilma and got the kid a Coke. Dillon was real silent for a while, but when she saw the picture of Buck on his desk she brightened right up. He told her about Buck, and they'd talked about horses. She started talking about Jane Hubble's horse, and the next thing she launched right in, telling him that Jane was missing, that she'd tried three times to see Jane and every time had been run off from Casa Capri. Told him how yesterday afternoon she'd found Jane's lap desk with the doll inside.

  He didn't point out to Dillon that she had no business in that closet and that she was taking things that weren't hers. The kid knew that. She described the closet shelves as stuffed full of small boxes of folded clothes and purses and shoes, items which, she thought, must belong to several people. Maybe, she said, to the six people Mae Rose said were missing.

  The irritating thing was, Dillon seemed like a sensible kid. He knew her folks; they were a decent family, no problems that he knew of. Helen Thurwell was one of the most reliable Realtors in the area. And Bob, for a literature professor, was all right-he seemed a no-nonsense sort. Dillon Thurwell did not seem the type to go off on wild fancies, any more than Wilma did.

  And what disturbed him was, the kid's story dovetailed exactly with Susan Dorriss's phone call.

  That made him smile in spite of himself, and made him know he'd better pay attention-better to be wrong than plain bullheaded, and miss a bet. He'd hate like hell to be outflanked by a team of juvenile and geriatric amateur sleuths.

  Driving slowly up the hills through the thick fog, he topped out suddenly above the white vapor blanket into sunshine. The hills, above that dense layer, shone bright, the sky above him clear and blue. Maybe he was getting old and soft-headed, and he'd sure take a ribbing from the department if he followed up on this doll business, but it wasn't something he wanted to ignore.

  Turning south, he soon swung into his own narrow drive and headed back between the pastures. Across the pasture he saw Buck lift his head, looking toward the car. The gelding stood a minute, ears sharp forward, then headed at a trot for the barn, knowing damn well if Harper was home in the middle of the day that they'd take a ride. Buck loved company, and he was rotten spoiled.

  Harper parked by the little two-stall barn behind the house, wondering idly how Dillon Thurwell would get along with Buck, or maybe with one of the neighbor's horses.

  No one knew better than he that kids could be skilled liars, that Dillon could be jiving him. The kid could have gone along with Mae Rose's fantasy just for the excitement, could have made up more details and embroidered on the story just for fun, could have put that note in the doll herself, sewn it up, hidden it in the cupboard- ragged stitches like a child's stitches.

  He'd hate like hell to get scammed by a twelve-year-old con artist.

  But he didn't think Dillon had done that.

  His gut feeling, like Wilma's, was that the kid, though her imagination might have colored what she saw and was told, did not mean deliberately to mislead them.

  In the house he changed into Levi's and boots and a soft shirt, and clipped his radio to his belt. Stepping out to the little barn again, he brushed Buck down, saddled him, and swung on. Buck ducked his chin playfully as they headed over the hills toward the Prior place.

  Within half an hour he was crossing the hill above the old hacienda, looking down into the old, oak-shaded cemetery. The estate lay just above the fog, and as he studied the wooded cemetery and the ancient headstones, a mower started up near the stables. Buck snorted at the noise and wanted to shy. He watched the groundskeeper swing aboard the machine, and as he started to mow around the stable Buck bowed his neck and blew softly; but he was no longer looking at the mower, he was staring toward the old graves.

  Scanning the grove, Harper saw a quick movement low to the ground as something small fled away into the shadows. Maybe a big bird had come down after some creature, maybe a crow. Or maybe it had been a rabbit or a squirrel, frightened by something. The breeze shifted, rustling the oak leaves; and as the light changed within the woods, he saw it again. Two cats streaking away.

  He guessed if there were cats around, still alive, there wasn't any poison nearby. Or maybe cats were smarter than dogs about that stuff. He rode on down, pulling Buck up at the edge of the woods. And he saw the cats again, watched them disappear into the bushes near the main house. That gray cat looked like Clyde Damen's tomcat, but it wouldn't be way up here.

  He was getting a fixation about that cat. Ever since that hot-car bust up at Beckwhite's last summer, when Damen's cat got mixed up in the action and almost got itself shot, ever since then he thought he saw the cat everywhere.

  But he did see it more than he liked. Every poker night there it was on the table, watching him play his hand. Who, but Damen, would let a cat sit on the table. It gave him the creeps the way the cat watched him bet, those big yellow eyes looking almost like it understood what he was doing. He could swear that last night, every time he raked in a pot, the cat almost grinned at him.

  Harper sighed. He was losing his perspective here.

  Getting as dotty as the old folks at Casa Capri.

  Yet no amount of chiding himself changed the fact that there was something strange about Damen's cat, something that stirred in him a jab of fear, or wonder, or some damned thing. He sensed about the cat something beyond the facts by which he lived, something beyond his reach, some element he should pay attention to, and would prefer not to consider.

  28

  Earlier, on a hill above the Prior estate, the two cats crouched, looking down at the old hacienda, enjoying the warm sunshine after climbing up through fog so thick they thought they were under the sea. Licking hard at their damp fur, energetically they fluffed their coats, licked beads of fog from their whiskers and paws. Directly below, the old hacienda and stable stood faded and dusty-looking, their tile roofs bleached to the color of pale earth, their adobe walls lumpy with the shaping of patient hands long since gone to dust.

  Beyond the old buildings, the main house rose sharply defined, its tile roof gleaming bright red, its precision-built walls smooth and white, and its gardens and lawns neatly manicured. The hilltop estate at this moment was an island, the sea of fog lapping at its gardens and curved drive. Far away across the top of the fog, the crowns of other hills emerged: other islands, an arc
hipelago. And the real sea, the Pacific, and the village beside it were gone, drowned in the heavy mists.

  Above the estate, on the sun-drenched hill, the warm grass buzzed with busy insects, ticking away beneath the cats' paws. And as Joe and Dulcie rested, washing their ears and faces, from below came the soft cadence of Spanish music, electronically broadcast songs from somewhere within the hacienda, music plucked out of the air in a manner never dreamed possible when this hacienda was built, when the only music available came from live musicians blowing and jigging and strumming.

  Three cars were parked before the old homeplace, all late-model American makes. Evidently the house staff, like the employees of Casa Capri, were well treated.

  "If Adelina hires so many Spanish-speaking people," Dulcie said, "she must speak Spanish herself. How could she control someone if she didn't know what they were saying?"

  Joe smiled. "Or if no one knew she spoke Spanish, she'd be ahead of them all. Could really keep them in line." He batted at a grasshopper, knocked it off its grass stem, but released it. "Whatever's going on at Casa Capri, those nurses with no English might not have a clue."

  He studied the cemetery below them, off to their right, the dark, misshapen headstones set among thick old oaks. They could see the police barrier of yellow ribbon at the far side, strung around a rectangle of raw earth. Dolores Fernandez's open grave. "What makes Harper think no one will bother the grave just because he tied a ribbon around it?"

  "Maybe there's a guard."

  "Do you see a guard?"

  She shrugged, a brief twitch of her dark tabby shoulder. "Maybe the gardener or handyman?" They could see no one on the grounds, though they could hear someone tinkering, an occasional metallic click above the radio music, coming from the direction of the old stable. Dulcie yawned, stretched, and they trotted on down into the shadowed woods of the cemetery.

  The grass beneath their paws was clipped short and smooth, was as well kept as any park. It had been cleared of leaves, and was trimmed neatly around the thick oak trunks and around the old headstones. Some of the graves had sunk, forming shallow depressions. The old granite markers were deeply worn by water and wind, their crumbling edges blackened with dirt, their ornately written Spanish epitaphs dark with soil, some nearly illegible. Several headstones featured the angel of death, with hands beckoning and wings outspread. Other grave markers were carved with hollow-eyed, bony skulls. They found one happy-looking angel, a cherub-faced child with a broken nose. Farther on, two blackened angels joined hands, dirty-faced and naughty. They did not know the meaning of the epitaphs, but muere appeared twice, and Dulcie thought it meant death.

  Se muere como se vivi.

  No se puedo creer eso ella es muerto.

  Walking softly, they approached the cordoned-off grave and trotted under the barrier of yellow police tape.

  The body had been removed; only a hole remained, neatly excavated. The investigating team had not taken only bone samples, as the newspaper said.

  Circling the raw earth mound, they sniffed at the shovel marks and at an occasional shoe print where the police and the forensics examiner had been working. Outside the ribbon barrier, clods of raw earth lay scattered across the grass.

  They did not know precisely what they were looking for-but they were looking for anything strange, any small detail the police might have missed, but that a cat would see or smell. The grave did not smell of death; it smelled of moldering earth.

  There were marks in the earth where pieces of the casket had lain, and they could see the bristle marks of a small brush, as if the excavation had been as carefully attended as an archaeological dig.

  "We could dig deeper," Dulcie ventured.

  "And find what? They have the bones. And don't you think they dug deeper beneath the body?" He prowled beyond the grave, nosing among tree roots, sniffing at the grass.

  Once, they thought they caught Teddy's scent, but they couldn't be sure. They could find no wheel marks from Teddy's rolling chair. Quartering the cemetery, trotting over the smooth turf and protruding roots that bisected the lawn like huge arteries, they moved in a careful grid, working back and forth. Twice more they caught Teddy's scent. But it was old, faded, and mixed with the sharp perfume of grass and leaves and earth.

  But then, suddenly, a powerful smell stopped them. The stink made Joe bare his teeth in a grimace of disgust, made Dulcie back away.

  The smell of death, of rotting flesh.

  Approaching a heap of dry oak leaves, where the smell came strongest, Dulcie froze.

  "Cyanide. I smell cyanide, too." The smell made her gag and grimace. The leaves were piled against a tree, as if they had been missed by the lawn-care equipment, by the vacuum or blower or mulching mower. It was the only pile of leaves in the neatly manicured cemetery. Dulcie lifted a reluctant paw, lightly pulled away leaves, hating the cyanide smell. She had, earlier this year, been shocked to find the same deadly chemical lacing her freshly served salmon.

  Now she raked angrily at the tangle, pawing it away.

  Revealing, half-hidden beneath the pile of leaves, a lump of dark, raw meat.

  She thought at first it was a lump of human flesh, then she saw that it was hamburger, half-rotted, a disgusting mound several days old. The combined stink of rotting meat and the almondlike smell of the cyanide forced bile into her mouth. She turned away quickly, gagged, and threw up on the grass.

  Joe regarded the bait with disgust. "We can't leave that mess for a dog to find." A cat, of course, would have better sense than to go near it; no cat likes rotten meat, no cat would roll in rotten meat the way a dog does.

  Holding their breath, they dug a hole deep into the sandy loam, and, by pushing a heap of leaves against the meat, they managed to paw it in. They had covered the hole with earth and leaves and had moved away where the air was fresher, were scuffing their paws in the grass to clean them, when Dulcie stared at the turf between her paws.

  "There's a little crack here. Look at this. A little thin crack in the earth, under the grass."

  The line was as straight as a ruler. She pressed her nose against it. "And the grass blades go in a different direction."

  When they followed the line, they found another, crossing it. Pacing, they made out an even grid of crossing lines. Someone had laid sod here, piecing it so cleverly that one would never see the cracks unless one's nose was practically against them. From a human's view, they thought, the turf would seem undisturbed. Fascinated, Dulcie skinned up a tree for a look from a person's height.

  Yes, from six feet up the grass stretched away smooth as velvet, a clean, unbroken turf. "No one would know. They could…" She paused, watching the hills above. "There's a rider coming. Do the Priors keep horses?"

  "Harper said they don't. Remember, he sounded disgusted that Adelina would waste such a nice barn." Joe grinned. "He was really annoyed that she didn't have the place full of horses."

  Horse and rider were too far away to be seen clearly, and on the crest of the hill they stopped; the rider sat his horse, looking down toward the cemetery.

  "Can he see us?"

  "I doubt it. And what difference?"

  She studied the rider's tall, slim form, his easy seat, the tilt of his head. "I think that's Harper. Let's get out of here." She leaped out of the tree, and they moved away, going deeper among the shadowed headstones. They had just settled down where they knew they wouldn't be seen, when the roar of a motor started up, coming from the stable and heading in their direction.

  Rearing up, they could see a big riding mower, the dark-haired driver wheeling it directly toward the graveyard. Irritated, they moved out of his path, into shadows between the trunks of six big oaks.

  But the mower turned, making straight for them again, toward the exact spot where they crouched. Unnerved, they ran, quitting the grove, racing flat out toward the main house.

  Azalea bushes bordered the back patio. They crouched beneath that shelter, at the edge of the wide brick terrace. "Nice,"
Dulcie said, looking out. The sunny expanse was furnished with heavy wrought-iron chairs cast in the patterns of flowers and twining leaves and fitted with soft-looking, flowered pillows. Pots of red geraniums set off this outdoor sitting area, and at its edge, wide glass doors opened into the living room and the dining room, where they could see polished floors, and rich, dark furniture.

  From within the house they could hear the roar of a vacuum cleaner, accompanied by the same Spanish radio station that played behind them in the old hacienda, the brassy cadences of a metallic horn and guitar.

  The French doors to the sunken living room stood open. They glanced at each other and grinned. There was no need to break and enter-they could waltz right on in. If cats could do a high five-and did not find such antics beneath their dignity-they would have been slapping paws.

  In fact, they could enter the house almost anywhere; nearly every window stood open, welcoming the sunny morning. Along the second floor, six sets of French doors stood ajar, giving onto a row of private balconies. And far to their left, facing the patio, the kitchen door was wide-open. Beyond the corner of the house, they could see two cars parked, the door of one open, as if someone were unloading groceries or perhaps ready to leave.