Cat on the Money

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  “The gloves had something to do with the burglary?” Clyde asked innocently. “Or maybe with the death of Frances Farrow? But you keep the station doors locked at night, keep that back door locked all the time. It would have to be one of your own people, to leave evidence there on your desk.”

  “Don’t you think I asked!”

  In the shadows, Dulcie’s green eyes shone with amusement. Clyde said nothing more, and soon, when Harper turned the conversation to his horses, Joe nudged Dulcie and they moved swiftly through the shadows beneath the tables, streaked past the bar and through the kitchen and out the screen door, into the narrow alley.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you,” Joe said, crouching beside the garbage cans. “Something that might explain why we haven’t seen old Greeley with the black tomcat. Come on.” And, ignoring the heady scent of raw fish and meat wrappers, he headed fast up Ocean Avenue, dodging around the feet of tourists.

  “What? Where are we going?” Dulcie hissed, galloping beside him.

  He didn’t answer, but lowered his head and ran, swerving down a side street-stopping suddenly when a black cat loomed out of the shadows, blocking their path.

  Azrael, black as sin, his tail lashing, his amber eyes narrowed and cold. He drew himself taller, bowing his neck, looking down at Joe. “So, little gray kitty. You are still following me? Still playing detective? What, you poor creature, do you imagine I’ve done now?”

  Joe Grey smiled, his yellow eyes assessing Azrael, his sleek gray coat rippling over hard muscle. “I had no thought of following you, you pitiful mouser. Though I see you are still playing at your mindless games, stealing money that only your whiskey-sodden partner can make use of.”

  Azrael laughed. “Not any more. That old fake is long gone-this tomcat works alone.”

  “And where did you leave him?”

  “Walking the streets of Panama, if it’s any of your business. Rolling drunk. Maybe dead by now, mugged in some alley.”

  “And you stowed away on your own, back to the states,” Joe said indulgently.

  Azrael laughed. “I have my contacts. That was a nice take, by the way, from Charles, Ltd.”

  “No cat on this earth, you poor, worm-ridden beast, can manipulate the dial of a safe. No cat can turn that little wheel with the required precision.”

  But Joe wondered. If a cat could turn a doorknob, as Joe and Dulcie and Azrael all could do, what might Azrael have taught himself, with sufficient practice? Was the dial of a safe beyond a clever cat’s talents? With a cat’s keen hearing, could not the tumblers tell him all he needed to know?

  Joe looked the tomcat over. “Who brought you back from Panama? What gullible human did you con into a plane ride?” Though if Joe’s suspicion was right, the idea that had sent him hurrying from Moreno ’s Grill, Azrael’s arrival was easily enough explained. “Who did you con into taking you aboard in a little wire cage? Or did you spend 12 hours in the luggage hold, freezing your sorry tail?”

  The black tom leaped on Joe, all teeth and claws, the two raking each other in a whirlwind of hard, furry bodies, thumping against concrete and against the brick wall, a war of pent-up rage that ceased only when the third party threw her weight into the battle, slashing both toms and screaming at them until they broke apart to stare at her.

  She stood between them, holding Azrael’s gaze until the two toms moved far enough apart to formally end the battle. But she was shivering with fear. What she wanted to do was bolt. She’d always been afraid of Azrael, even when once, long ago, he had charmed her. His look at her now was deadly-an evil smile, the smile of a black shark heaving up from the darkest seas.

  And then he turned and sauntered away, lashing his long black tail.

  “Why did you do that?” Joe growled. “Why didn’t you let me finish him? You made me look a fool.”

  “Not at all. You would have killed each other. Look at you. Your ear’s torn, blood running down your face-your shoulder torn. Although you sent him away with as much blood,” she said softly, licking his ravaged ear. She watched Azrael, a black speck far in the distance, disappearing down an alley.

  “I think I know how he got here,” Joe said, “and who our burglar is.” He led Dulcie beneath the oak trees, in the gathering dusk, to her favorite shop.

  Standing close together, rearing up on their hind paws, they looked into the show window at the feast of bright colors and intricate patterns. “Here’s the link,” Joe said, “between Azrael and one of the look-alikes-maybe the best connection we have yet to the death of Frances Farrow.”

  Chapter Eight

  Dulcie reared up, looking into the brightly lighted display window, her tabby paws against the glass, her green eyes glowing; she never tired of the shop’s imports, the brilliantly colored Guatemalan jackets and weavings, the San Blas appliqués, the painted Mexican figures. Close beside her, Joe Grey watched her tenderly, always moved by his lady’s passion for the beautiful and exotic.

  They had met the shop’s owner, Ms. Sue Marble, at about the same time they met Azrael and old Greeley. The cats had been greatly amused when the lonely, white-haired lady and Greeley became an item and took off to Central America together, Sue on another buying trip, Greeley returning to his home-with Azrael in his carrier, of course. Sue knew nothing about the black cat’s hidden talents.

  Now the couple had been gone for nearly a year, and Azrael was back in the village with no sign of either Greeley or Sue-and the mysterious burglaries had resumed.

  “That jacket in the window,” Joe said, pawing at the glass. “The red one, woven with birds and animals. Where does that come from?”

  “ Ecuador, I think. Or maybe Peru. Why?”

  “I saw one like it last night, when I tossed the motel room of the look-alikes.”

  “Maybe one of them bought, it here. They could…”

  “It was worn, Dulcie. Faded, not new.”

  Dulcie sat down on the sidewalk, the concrete still warm from the vanished sun. “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m wondering if one of those three women has been in South America.”

  She smiled, her whiskers twitching. “You’re thinking one of them has been in Panama, and that’s how Azrael got back?” She licked her paw. “That’s reaching for it. What ever…?”

  “There were cat hairs on the jacket. Black cat hairs.”

  “You are maddening. Why didn’t you say so!”

  Joe smiled.

  “Could you smell his scent?”

  “Not in that motel room. Enough perfume and lotions in there to deaden the nose of an elephant.”

  “In Sue’s last letter to Wilma, she said she and Greeley were getting married. She said nothing about coming back. She seems very happy, making her buying trips out of Panama to Peru and Guatemala and shipping the purchases back here, to her shop manager.”

  Dulcie frowned, her ears going flat. “She did say she wasn’t happy about Greeley ’s cat, that he’d turned out to be a problem. Remember how, in the beginning, she called him a dear, handsome fellow! She thought he was so regal. Maybe Greeley and the tomcat were burglarizing shops in Panama, maybe she found out. Maybe she threw Azrael out of the house.”

  “That wouldn’t explain how he got here. Greeley has no friends in the village to send Azrael to, only his sister. And Mavity hates that cat.”

  “But maybe Greeley is here,” Dulcie said. “He’d be staying with Mavity. Let’s have a look.” And beneath the darkening evening sky, the cats headed for the marsh and Mavity’s little fishing shack. East three blocks through the village, and over seven to the marshy shore of the bay, then along through the cattails and sea grass, the mud cold beneath their paws and smelling of dead fish, to a long row of houses standing on mud-blackened stilts.

  Scenting around the pilings and around the tires of Mavity’s old VW bug, they found no hint of Greeley. But the tomcat had definitely been there. His day-old aroma was on the steps, and on a rusty porch chair as if he might have
slept there.

  The kitchen window that Azrael had once used as a private door was tightly closed. A light burned within. Leaping to the sill, Joe could not smell Azrael along the edge of the window, could smell only the ham and beans that must have been Mavity’s supper. A single clean bowl stood in the drain basket, with one knife, fork and spoon. He could see Mavity, beyond the open kitchen; the small, elderly woman curled up on the couch with a book, a blanket over her feet and a stack of romances on the table beside her. He watched her for a moment, purring, then dropped down again to where Dulcie sat on the cold, damp ground among the tarred posts.

  “No sign of Greeley,” Joe said. “If Azrael’s alone, maybe he sleeps here for a few hours-Mavity would never know.”

  “Do you suppose he’s lonely? Comes here to feel at home?”

  Joe Grey snorted. “More likely cold, after the heat of Panama. And looking to see if he can rip off Mavity in some way.”

  As they headed back to the village, the first star gleamed above them. Trotting through the darkening gardens, brushing among geraniums whose scent they would carry on their fur for hours, they were headed for Joe’s house when they saw Larry Cruz’s red car turning the corner toward Otter Pine Inn.

  Quickly following him, they watched him park and saunter onto the patio. But when they trotted in past the stink of exhaust and hot rubber, he had vanished.

  Beyond the mullioned windows of the tearoom, a soft light burned, and they could hear women’s voices. Teatime was long past. Padding to the stained glass door, the cats listened.

  “It’s Patty Rose and Alice,” Dulcie whispered, nosing at the slightly open door.

  Slipping in behind the baker’s rack with its potted ferns-where, so recently, Frances Farrow had lain dead-they watched the two women, sitting at a small wicker table with their drinks, deep in conversation. A generation apart, they looked more alike than most mothers and daughters, Alice blond and fresh and exactly as Patty had looked in her old movies. Patty was still a looker, too, her hair skillfully cut and colored, her figure still slim. Despite her wrinkles, Patty was still a beautiful woman.

  “Then you hadn’t seen Larry Cruz since you left Santa Monica?” Patty was saying.

  “No. And I certainty didn’t expect to see him here. That makes me so angry, that he’d follow me here.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t you he followed. Had you thought about that? When you learned to dive from him, were all your lessons alone?”

  “Yes. I didn’t get very good. But… that’s how I became involved with him. So foolish. I can never make that up to my husband.” Alice sighed. “I couldn’t help but tell Jim. I don’t keep secrets well,” she said softly.

  “Before you left Santa Monica, you never met Gail or saw her?”

  Alice spilled her drink, grabbed some paper napkins and bent to wipe it up.

  Patty Rose watched her with interest. “I know Santa Monica is only part of the LA sprawl, but you both lived near the beach. She must have been there for two or three months before you moved away. Strange that you or one of your friends weren’t aware of a woman who looks exactly like you.”

  “You’d think so.” Alice shook her head. “I never saw her, never heard of her.”

  “Did you ever suspect, when you were seeing Larry, that he was into any kind of trouble?”

  The question seemed difficult for Alice. “No, but… I’m not surprised, the way, after we broke up, that he kept bothering me, kept coming around, wouldn’t leave me alone. I asked the police what I could do, but they were busy and there wasn’t much. Larry was one of the reasons we moved.”

  “Maybe he discovered Gail after you left. It’s possible he followed her up here, pestering her the way he pestered you. The way he pestered me last year.”

  “As if he has some kind of fixation about the women in your old films?” Alice said, as if the idea had just occurred to her. “When I saw him with Gail, I thought, good for her. Good riddance. I never-I don’t think I ever saw him with any of the others. But Patty, if he was such a bother to you, why did you hire him?”

  “I didn’t think he was dangerous. And I thought it was better to have him where I could see him. And I must confess, I hoped that when the contest rolled around, he might take up with one of the contestants. I never dreamed that it would end like this,” Patty whispered. “In such an ugly way.”

  Patty drained her glass. “Will you lead the parade with me, Alice, in my car? I think it will take all of us together to help get over this nightmare.”

  Alice hesitated. “I’d rather not. I guess I’m more frightened of Larry… more frightened by Frances ’s death than I knew.”

  Patty nodded. “If you change your mind…” She got up, pushing back her chair. Before she turned, the cats slipped out onto the patio and around the corner… nearly under the feet of Larry Cruz where he stood hidden among the oleanders, against the wall of the tearoom. Listening. Scowling, as Alice walked away.

  Chapter Nine

  Patty Rose’s antique Rolls Royce led the parade, its top down, its white paint polished and gleaming, its brass fittings as bright as the afternoon sun that hung just above the sea. Patty, dressed in white satin, sat on the back of the front seat, looming above her liveried driver, smiling and waving. Dorothy Daniels had been right when she said Patty wouldn’t miss being queen of the festival, wouldn’t miss the publicity-though she wasn’t throwing kitty treats.

  On the warm, shingled roof high above the crowd, Joe Grey and Dulcie had the best seats in the village, their only competition a dozen scolding grackles-the dark, pushy birds sensibly keeping their distance from lethal claws. Behind Patty’s Rolls Royce came the Molena Point high school marching band, then a team of mounted riders dressed in white Western wear. Then the lead float, done in many colors of crepe paper and carrying the three look-alikes clad in black cat costumes, their cat masks seeming to smile as they performed little dance steps-teasers for their act to come on the stage that had been set up at the edge of the beach. On their float behind the three blondes were two rows of kennel cages, each with a clean, pretty cat cozied down on a blanket. The animal shelter must have chosen their most laid-back charges. All the cats seemed comfortable, unperturbed by the noise and the crowd. The float’s banners proclaimed:

  A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME WITHOUT KITTY.

  SAVE A LIFE AND BRIGHTEN YOUR LIFE.

  Behind the float came more riders, then seven more antique cars, including the yellow Chevy roadster belonging to Joe Grey’s housemate. Clyde Damen was all decked out in a clean white turtleneck and sport coat. Beside him rode his red-headed girlfriend, Charlie Getz. When she spotted the cats on the roof above, she waved to them with a secret smile.

  Following Clyde and Charlie came another marching band, then three more floats carrying village children dressed in cat costumes. All along the length of Ocean Avenue, the shops were decorated with cat banners, cat flags and cat kites. Stuffed toy cats were featured in the windows among displays of women’s wear, sweaters embroidered with cats, and cat jewelry. Although many shops were closed for the occasion, they had provided handsome decorations.

  The book store had an exhibit of cat books and a three-foot-tall Puss-in-boots made of crepe paper. One of the nicest women’s stores was hosting a cat-princess puppet show. And on every corner, Molena Point Animal Shelter had placed adoption booths with comfortably caged cats and charming young attendants.

  That aspect didn’t charm Dulcie. “I hope people don’t take kittens on a whim, like they would a toy, then not care for them.”

  “Do you always have to look for sand in the milk dish?”

  “I don’t always. But you’ve seen kittens… Oh, never mind.” And she turned away crossly.

  But Joe licked her ear. “They’re handing out brochures, Dulcie. And the volunteers are talking to people who want to adopt-they’re screening them and explaining the basics. Telling them what a little cat needs to be healthy and safe. I listened to one. She sounded like she k
new what she was doing.”

  “I hope so,” Dulcie said dourly. “I don’t… Look. Is that Azrael slipping along the roof above the gift shop?”

  They watched the black tom disappear within the shadows above the Mink Collar, a jewelry and leather boutique. At the same moment, on the sidewalk below them, Alice Manning came along behind the gathered onlookers; she was dressed in denim shorts and a white pullover. This had to be Alice; the other three were on the float.

  But it was Azrael who held Joe and Dulcie’s attention, who sent them racing across the roofs to the end of the block, dropping down to the balcony of the Mink Collar.

  Pushing through the open window where Azrael had disappeared, where they could smell his scent, they explored the storage room then trotted down the stairs into the shop, searching beneath the display cases and in the cupboards-then followed his trail to a door that would open to the alley.

  It was bolted from within, but a black cat hair clung to the metal. Nothing else in the store seemed to have been touched. The cash drawer beneath the computer was locked.

  “Maybe he was casing the place for later,” Joe said. “Maybe he saw us and left while we were crossing the street.”

  Dulcie said nothing, stood looking around, lashing her tail with irritation.

  They returned to the roofs, silhouetted now against the sinking sun. Below them the parade was ending, the floats gathering at the edge of the beach where the stage had been built and lights strung from poles. The three masked blondes sat on the edge of their float, bantering with the crowd. Some distance away, Alice Manning stood on the sand with her husband, the two of them eating hot dogs. Joe and Dulcie could see, beyond the parade route, several squad cars drifting along the quiet streets. They watched the performers gather, watched families spread out blankets on the sand in front of the stage, their backs to the setting sun and to the crowd that milled around behind them. Soon the entire shore was filled, people shouting the songs from Cats and cheering the black-cat dancers. Joe and Dulcie’s ears rang with the lyrics.