Cat Striking Back

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  18

  WHEN JOE SLIPPED out of his tower to the rooftops, his belly full of supper and his mind on the empty houses, the fog had blown away; the sky was clear, the moon bright as he leaped across the shingles to the neighbor’s roof and raced on into the night. He had gone three blocks galloping across the peaks through paths of moonlight when he spotted Dulcie. She stood on a little balcony, rearing up, her tabby coat silhouetted against the white wall of a penthouse. They raced to meet; skidding close together they exchanged a whisker kiss and then galloped away toward the block of Charlie’s vacationing clients. Who knew what scent they’d pick up, what details a human might miss?

  Hurrying across the village, the streets below them were busy with cars and pedestrians, with couples coming from the restaurants or window shopping. The traffic thinned as they moved onto the residential roofs; soon the streets below were quiet and nearly empty, only a few pedestrians hurrying along. A silent runner passed beneath them as they approached the targeted homes. They were two roofs from the Waterman house when they saw Kit, poised high on a shingled peak. She was not alone.

  “What’s this?” Joe said. “She’s picked up a stray?” A small, ragged, half-grown cat stood beside her.

  “That’s the cat from the clowder,” Dulcie said. “The little cat that Kit was so taken with this morning. She’s hardly more than a kitten, what’s she doing here? Oh, my. Has Kit lured her away from the clowder?”

  As Joe and Dulcie approached, the little female crouched warily. Kit looked down at her small charge in a patient and proprietary way. “Tansy,” Kit said by way of introduction. “She lived in the village once.”

  “I lived in that house over there,” Tansy said shyly, pointing her ears at the Waterman house.

  “Did you?” Joe said with interest. “That’s where we’re going. Do you know how to get in?”

  “There’s a dog door. But-”

  “Are you friends with the dog?”

  “Oh, the beagle’s dead now,” Tansy said. “He was old and friendly. He was a little afraid of me,” she added, twitching her whiskers.

  Dropping into a pepper tree beside the Watermans’, Joe crouched on a branch, looking back at Tansy. “Come on, then,” he told her. She followed as the four cats moved quickly, trying to remain out of sight among the foliage. To any casual observer this would look strange indeed, cats do not travel in packs, this was not normal feline behavior.

  The house was one story with pale stucco walls, the curved tile roof still warm beneath their paws, holding the heat of the day. Below them, the solid wood fence that enclosed the backyard was far higher than necessary to contain the small beagle that had lived with the Watermans.

  Dulcie said, “I’m surprised Ben Waterman went with Rita; Charlie said he hardly ever does, that he’d rather stay home, putter around, and play a little golf. But I guess a tour guide is pretty busy, maybe that’s why she makes her trips alone.”

  “It’s their anniversary,” Joe said. “Clyde worked on their car a few weeks ago; they told him they were either driving up to San Francisco or flying to Greece or the Antilles, they hadn’t made up their minds.”

  “I wonder what it’s like,” Dulcie said.

  “What what’s like?” Joe said absently.

  “ Greece. There are lots of cats, feral cats. I wonder…Are there cats like us? Are our relatives there? Have speaking cats survived there from ancient times?”

  “Come on,” Joe said impatiently. Glancing toward the neighbors’ windows, they dropped down onto the six-foot fence and then into the backyard. Half hidden between two mock orange bushes was a dog door into the garage. They slipped inside one by one, Tansy headed through a second doggy door into the family kitchen.

  The kitchen corner where the dog bed had been still smelled faintly of the sweet-leather scent of an old dog. There was no sound from deeper within the house. They stood sniffing, seeking any other scent that might seem out of place, and, rearing up, they looked around the bright room for any sign of disturbance.

  The kitchen seemed perfectly in order, the cupboards all neatly shut, their mullioned glass doors showing china and crystalware carefully arranged on the shelves within. On the tile counters they could see a stainless steel toaster, convection oven, microwave, food processor, blender, and an expensive coffeemaker with its own grinder. None of those had been stolen, and what else of value would a kitchen contain? “When does she use all those?” Joe said. “She’s gone half the time.”

  “Maybe he cooks,” said Dulcie. “Wilma says when she’s home they’re very social, they’re always involved in some local event and they entertain a lot.” Turning away, she followed Tansy into the Watermans’ living room, a big, square room with a thick white carpet and a high ceiling set with three skylights. The furnishings were white and soft and deep, set against cocoa-colored walls: white velvet chairs, white leather couch, a perfect setting for the beautiful Rita Waterman. Over the fireplace there was an oversize mirror in an ornate silver frame, the glass reflecting the room in reverse like Alice ’s mirror into Wonderland. Two matching mirrors hung at the other end of the room, on either side of the arch that led into the entry hall.

  “Does she have mirrors to to make the room look bigger? Or to reflect herself?” Dulcie wondered. She imagined the tall, slim blonde reflected over and over in endless and perfect images. The room did not look lived in. There was not a book or a magazine in sight, not a pillow out of place, nothing personal left lying around; but when they sniffed the furniture they smelled cat, and could see cat hairs clinging to it. There were three cat baskets, all on low stools, all lined with white plush, all dusted with multicolored cat hairs smelling of the Waterman cats.

  “There are cat beds in every room,” Tansy said with longing. “I didn’t live here long. The other cats chased me away, so I went to another house. I was only little then, and her cats didn’t like me much.”

  Kit licked Tansy’s ear, amusing Joe and Dulcie. Kit had found a small and needy friend, a little creature who seemed needy and quite lost.

  “But I came back sometimes,” Tansy said, “when the other cats were out hunting. They had a housekeeper. Betty. She took care of the cats, but then she retired, whatever that means, and went to live with her daughter. Rita’s husband, Ben, he didn’t let on, but he didn’t like animals much. If Rita ever went away or died, he’d have sent them all to the pound.”

  The cats couldn’t imagine slim, blond, beautiful Rita Waterman dead, she seemed indestructible. She was a strong woman who did as she pleased, who made of her life what she pleased.

  Mavity Flowers, one of Charlie’s cleaning ladies and Charlie and Wilma’s good friend, said that Rita had had a fling with the neighbor two doors down, with handsome Ed Becker. Such behavior shocked Dulcie, though she knew that was unrealistic. She always wanted to think better of humans. In the world of speaking cats, pairing was a serious commitment. Cats did not wander astray; if a cat was tempted, the cat community judged him harshly and sometimes drove him out, to live away from the clowder. A clowder of speaking cats wasn’t like a band of ordinary ferals. Speaking cats even hunted cooperatively-they lived by a different set of rules, by a code as intricate and ancient as their own history.

  As they padded through the dining room and study, Joe tried to catch any scent that might seem not to belong-hard to do in a strange house. He had a look at the front door, and at a side door that opened to the patio from the small study. Those and the glass sliders to the patio were all locked, and he found no marks of a break-in.

  “When Rita was home,” Tansy said, “I used to watch her dress or pack her suitcases. I liked to watch her put on her jewelry, all her beautiful jewelry.”

  “If someone broke in,” Joe said, “and they knew about the jewelry, maybe that’s where they’d start. I wonder if Charlie looked to see if it was there.”

  Tansy’s eyes widened and she spun away, galloping down the hall. They followed her toward the master bedroom, passi
ng three other bedrooms. All three were large, elegantly furnished in white and cream and pastel tones. Designed, Dulcie thought, as a complimentary background for Rita’s blond beauty. The rooms did not seem disturbed, all were neat and did not look lived in. She paused, looking into one at the small stone fireplace, the satin bedspread. Why, suddenly, did she feel afraid? Why were her paws sweating as if something was wrong? She prowled the room, looking, but there was nothing to bother her. Shaking her whiskers, annoyed at herself, she hurried to join the others, trotting down the hall along the thick white carpet.

  The master suite was furnished all in white, the windows draped in a sheer white gauze; it was not a man’s kind of chamber. Tansy led them across the thick carpet to two large dressing rooms with a compartmented bath between them. “There,” she said, slipping into the room that smelled of perfume and was hung with garment bags full of pale suits and dresses.

  Built into the end wall was a pair of white, intricately carved cupboard doors with brass hinges, brass handles, and a brass lock. “Her jewelry’s there.”

  When Joe leaped up to paw at the handles, Tansy watched him patiently. He tried, and tried again, but the doors were indeed securely locked.

  “On the shelf,” Tansy said at last, having let him struggle, amused by his useless tomcat hustle. Leaping onto the dressing table and then to the shelf above the hanging clothes, she reached her paw behind a stack of plastic storage boxes.

  She felt around. She clawed deeper. Deeper still, and then pawed the boxes aside.

  “It’s gone,” she said with dismay, looking down at them. She began to move boxes with her furry shoulder, pushing them aside. She was moving the last box when something slithered toward the edge. Her quick paw grabbed it. “Here!” she said, and from her paw dangled a gold chain with a brass key attached.

  But then she looked down helplessly at Joe. She knew what the key was for, she’d seen Rita open the cupboard. But she didn’t know how to get that tiny key into the lock.

  Leaping up beside her, Joe took the key carefully between his teeth. Crawling belly down on the shelf, he shoved himself out until half of him was hanging over space-but even by bracing one paw against the cupboard door, he couldn’t reach the lock. He leaned farther, nearly overbalanced. Dulcie jumped up beside him, took the end of Joe’s short tail in her mouth and leaned back. Kit joined them, gripping the skin above his flank. He tried again. Holding his breath and carefully aligning the key, he slipped it into the keyhole.

  But when he tried to turn it, he overbalanced and fell, pulling Dulcie and Kit with him. They landed in a tangle. Tansy turned away, not daring to laugh.

  They tried again, the three females all hanging on to Joe as he stretched out over space. At last he got the key into the lock again, and this time he kept his balance while he turned it. Backing away across the shelf, he pulled the door open. As it swung wide, Kit caught her breath and Dulcie let out a startled “Meow!”

  Jewels blazed out at them, a rich array of stones of every color, set in ornately carved works of gold and silver that the cats thought should grace a museum. The broaches and bracelets were arranged on narrow shelves, the pendants and necklaces hanging behind them. Rings and earrings were stored in clear little boxes. Dulcie looked and looked. If ever a cat felt a surge of kleptomania, she felt it now. It had been a long time since she’d had such a strong urge to “borrow” some lovely human treasure.

  In the village library, where she liked to prowl at night, she had pored over books of antique collections like this from all around the world and from many centuries. Some of the pieces were set with real jewels and some with paste replicas, but even with those, the settings themselves were of great value. Even in photographs, they were so beautiful that she longed to touch them. The same desire gripped her now, that had so excited her when, as a younger cat, she had stolen beautiful cashmere carves and luxurious satin teddies from Wilma’s neighbors. She wanted to reach her paw in and lift out each lovely piece with her curved claws. She wanted to feel each rich necklace around her own furry neck, she wanted to look in the mirror and see that Etruscan pendant gleaming emerald bright against her dark stripes.

  “Coral and turquoise,” Dulcie said softly. “Lapis lazuli. Topaz. Such beautiful jewelry to set off Rita’s own beauty. Even with jeans she wears a silk or cashmere top and lovely jewelry.”

  “She calls it antique costume jewelry,” Tansy said. “She brings it back from all over the world. I’ve heard her name the places-places I’ve never heard of or imagined!”

  “If someone was in here,” Joe said, “maybe casing these houses, did they find this cupboard? Did they move the key? Or did Rita? And why would a burglar open it but take nothing? If someone was casing these places and planning a burglary for later, what are they waiting for?” Joe thought about the scars on the Chapmans’ patio door, about Mango shut away from her kittens, and about the man watching from the hill below and then running. And the cats left the Waterman house, puzzled, wondering if they were on the right track at all, wondering if they were way off base, as they moved on to investigate the other two empty homes.

  19

  HE STOOD ON the hill beside the car hidden by the heavy cypress branches, looking down along the lower roads. There were no car lights, and only a few scattered houselights shone, muted behind closed curtains. People were settling in for the evening, and that old couple with their canes and their weird dog were gone. It had taken them long enough, nothing better to do than sit on a stone wall watching the fog roll in. He’d lost sight of them for a while, and when he looked again they’d vanished. He meant to wait another hour, until there was less likelihood of cars, before he started digging. He didn’t want someone taking a late-evening walk and hearing the sound of the shovel or seeing the reflection of his flashlight through the garage window.

  Getting in the car, silently closing the door, he sat looking down at the quiet, bucolic neighborhood. Those houses down there, none of them were very impressive, just little wood-framed places, ordinary and small. A strange neighborhood to be putting a lot of work and money into a remodel, particularly with the economy in trouble. Why spend time on the nondescript place, why take the risk?

  He didn’t let himself think that he was taking an even greater risk-and that he had a lot more to lose than did that contractor.

  He had laid the flashlight and tools on the backseat, everything was ready. He wished he could play the radio but he didn’t want to chance it. She’d have turned on the oldies station, she didn’t like to sit quietly when they were together.

  Yet she’d lie for hours soaking up the sun, silent and alone and completely happy. He hated that, hated that she’d liked being alone.

  When he started getting restless, he did turn the radio on, real low, but then nervously turned it off again. Below him, the lights in one house went out, as if the occupants had gone to bed. Or were they leaving, going out? But no car lights came on and moved away. He was about to gather up his tools and get on with the unpleasant work ahead when, far down the hill, lights appeared from around a bend, heading up toward him.

  He watched the car getting closer, watched it turn onto the street below and head up the hill, straight for the remodel, making him wish he’d pulled his car even deeper under the trees. As it passed the last lighted house he saw its black-and-white pattern. Black car, white door with MOLENA POINT POLICE stenciled on it. It paused before the remodel, generating in him a jolt of panic.

  He could see only the driver, couldn’t tell if he was alone. He sat with the motor running, shining the beam of his flashlight over the house and yard. It paused at the dirt pile. He prayed the guy wouldn’t walk the property, that he wouldn’t try the pedestrian door into the garage, which he’d left unlocked. The thought of a cop going in there made cold sweat prick his neck and shoulders. Was this a routine patrol, or had someone seen him walking around the place and called 911?

  The cop’s light played over and around the dirt pile for a
few minutes but then swung back across the front door and front windows and the garage window. There, again it paused. He expected the guy to get out, maybe walk around the place. If he checked the doors, found the garage door unlocked, would he go inside? There was nothing to see in there. Yet. Would he maybe call the contractor, that the door was unlocked, meet her up here so she could check it out herself?

  But the cop didn’t get out, he just sat there behind the wheel, looking. As if this was only a routine check after all, and he’d be gone in a minute. He could hear the guy talking on the radio but couldn’t make out what he said, his voice was low and the distance too great. Was it something about this house or something else entirely? Maybe only a routine call. It seemed forever before the cop moved on, heading up the hill toward him. As the squad car approached the cypress trees, he slid down in the seat, thinking about the shovel on the floor and the tools lying in plain sight on the backseat.

  He watched the reflection of moving headlights, lis tened to the crunch of tires on the rough street as the unit passed within a few feet of his hidden car. He didn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe. His blood felt like ice.

  But the guy didn’t stop, didn’t see his car. He remained crouched out of sight, listening to it move on up the hill. Did he hear it stop, up there? Yes, when he rose warily to look, it had paused at a lighted house high on the hill above.

  Again he waited, again the cop remained in his car, just sitting there, shining his light around. Didn’t he have anything better to do? What, was he checking out a report of someone prowling around up here? Why didn’t he get out and walk the properties, then? Was it because he was alone, without backup? Was he afraid to walk these hills alone?