Cat Chase the Moon

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Yet if she ran away, how could she find out any more about Fay, any more than she’d learned from prowling her closet and her dresser drawers? How could she find out the rest of their plan? Because there was more. Little innuendos on the phone—she thought that was the word—that she didn’t understand, but things that Ulrich didn’t want the cops to know.

  But now, when Seaver switched on the desk light, too, so it shone across directly on Courtney, Fay stood looking at her, smiling with delight. “Oh, my, she’s beautiful! She’s elegant, with those striking bracelets, and that wonderful mix of colors down her back—like the queen’s robes. She outshines all the photos you sent me.”

  Fay was nearly as tall as Ulrich, slim and sleekly dressed in a tailored suit as handsome as the others in her closet. She was wearing expensive hose and low leather shoes that looked hand-stitched, striking but comfortable. Courtney was surprised at how much she’d learned about people’s clothes and the habits of humans in the short time she’d been on this earth—or maybe she’d known from lives already past, and was just beginning to remember. Or maybe, she thought, amused, she had learned from watching those mind-numbing TV shows?

  Seaver set Fay’s small suitcase and leather overnight bag down by the stairs. Her luggage had carry-on tags. Her hair was the color of deep maple, sleekly styled, with a bun in the back, a gold pin through it. Her eyes were brown. She watched Courtney sit up taller between the pillows. She took a step toward the calico and gently put out her hand.

  “You’re lovely, my dear.” She said nothing more, she didn’t gush; but her eyes were bright with pleasure, and only softly did she move closer, as if wondering whether Courtney would tolerate being petted or stroked on their first meeting; as if Courtney might be too shy, or too austere, and would need to be courted, like the real queen she was. “And you’re smart,” she said, “I can tell by your looks; you’ll learn your tricks in no time.”

  Courtney went very still. Tricks. She considered Fay for some time, then decided to play Fay’s game, for a little while. She lifted her right foot prettily, her three black bracelets bright in the lamplight. Fay looked and looked at the calico’s vivid markings. “So perfect,” she said, and gently she sat down near her.

  Courtney eased closer, sniffing her scent, admiring the looks of this finely turned-out woman who intended to make her famous . . .

  This woman, a little voice in Courtney’s head whispered, this woman who means to keep me captive just as Seaver is doing? This woman who, no matter how nice she seems, means to teach me tricks and show me off to crowds of strangers and make lots of money on me?

  Sitting close to Fay and enjoying her petting, or pretending to, pretending to be a loving kitty, Courtney was all mixed up. Was she, all her life, going to be so excited by fame one minute, but as confused as a trapped mouse the next?

  While Bert put away his vacuum and opened the shop, the three of them went upstairs, Fay carrying Courtney tenderly over her shoulder—a tender but very firm grip that offered little chance of escape. Upstairs in the little kitchen, Ulrich made a cup of tea for Fay, while Fay opened her overnight bag and spread out a stack of oversized photographs across the coffee table. He set her tea on an end table, and they sat on the couch, Fay shuffling the pictures as they looked. “All taken at the museum gallery,” she said, “a preview of the show, though the finished exhibit will be far more wonderful.”

  Ulrich exclaimed and admired, and Courtney couldn’t help purring as she was held across Fay’s shoulder. Some were of Courtney herself that Ulrich had sent Fay. Some were of tapestries of her. All were framed, and some already hung on the gallery walls; some were of the museum building itself, so elegant that the calico was wide-eyed with pride.

  “You see how much she likes the pictures,” Fay said inanely. “And she’s already cuddling up to me. Oh, she’ll love her new home, and she’ll love learning her new tricks—she’ll love the audiences’ applause, she’ll be so happy in her new life.” She turned to rub her face against Courtney’s. “Oh, you’ll be such a wealthy cat, my dear,” but her glance at Ulrich held a twisted smile that turned Courtney cold; it might be a very long time before Joe Grey’s daughter learned to trust this woman.

  18

  While Joe Grey watched Maurita’s drama play out at MPPD and considered her new hiding place, Dulcie, on the rooftop outside Seaver’s second-floor apartment, having scrambled out through the powder room window, climbed up a spindly tree to join Kit and Pan. Where the draperies were partially open, the golden tom and his fluffy tortoiseshell lady were crouched beneath the sill peering into the living room. Dulcie joined them; all three cats were impressed by the elegant woman who sat at the oversized coffee table with Ulrich, holding Courtney on her shoulder. They had spread out a stack of enlarged color photographs; most were pictures of Courtney herself, flattering her little cat ego. Some were of a museum gallery, its high ceiling lighted through an impressive glass dome, the walls hung with framed pictures and tapestries of cats exactly like her, each within an ornate gold frame. The works were from many centuries and many lands. Each piece had a printed card on the wall beside it telling the story of its history.

  One oversized, bright photograph showed a velvet-draped corner of the gallery where a queen’s throne might stand. Here rose the calico queen’s aerie, a satin bed within a tall cage rising up, hand carved of what might be rosewood, a bright, three-tiered structure big enough for a dozen cats, its many nooks and shelves embellished with embroidered pillows and handwoven throws. This was Courtney’s home-to-be. But this enclosure, instead of impressing her, totally undid the young calico. When she looked past Fay, out the window at the three cats, her amber eyes were big and frightened. Suddenly she wanted out—out of the apartment, out of the antiques store, outside on the far rooftops, and free.

  Yet her look was determined, too. Dulcie could read her calico kitten’s intent: she did not mean to leave this place until she knew what final fate these two meant for her.

  When Seaver rose, the three cats dropped flat and backed away on their bellies, sickened by the kitten’s fear and uncertainty. She might revel in thoughts of fame for a while, and then in fame itself. But what next? Would she live all her life as a captive, a caged show cat? When the woman rose and closed the draperies, they could still see beneath, through a tiny space. They looked at each other, and backed away. They hated leaving Courtney but at that moment there was nothing they could do to free her, even if she had been ready to escape.

  All these windows were beyond opening, and the door to the stairs seemed always to be closed tight. They wished Joe Grey were there. Watching Courtney, they knew that deep in her calico soul she was as conflicted as a kitten ever could be. One minute happily purring with thoughts of a life as glamorous as a movie star’s, the next minute her eyes wide with fear, imagining herself forever locked in a cage stared at by strangers while the Seavers’ gold-framed tapestries of her raked in the money—and who knew how many of those beautiful pieces were even authentic?

  The three cats left Seaver’s feeling grim, trying every way they could to work out a plan, to get Courtney out of there. At least the Seavers seemed to be treating her well, cushions strewn around, a soft blanket, and they were feeding her lovely delicacies—though they didn’t know much about cats. If she were an ordinary feline, she’d be sick as hell from that diet, and soon she’d be dead. Speaking cats did fine on human food, but ordinary cats did not. With all Dr. Firetti’s tedious research, with all his blood tests, he had never found the answer as to why.

  As they prowled the rooftops, Dulcie’s mind on Courtney and on the fancy promises that the Seavers had laid out, shame touched her—how could a kitten of hers, certainly not one with Courtney’s beauty and intelligence, stupidly hand over her life to captivity, how could she sell out cheap to this shoddy deception?

  Heading over the shingles for MPPD, they stayed close together, each trying to think of a plan to free her and wondering if one of them, in
the role of snitch, should report to the cops that they knew where the lost cat was, and that she had been stolen. Was there a law against stealing cats?

  Or they could capture Courtney themselves. If they could still get out the window. If they could, but she refused to go with them, their claws and teeth might force her out of the shop.

  But how do you imprison your own kitten? Maybe they could lock her up at home with Wilma until she found her senses. Dulcie could imagine her tall, gray-haired housemate, her retired parole officer housemate, nailing the guest-room windows shut and standing guard at the door, and that made her roll over laughing. They had reached the roof of the station and were about to drop down the oak tree when a sheriff’s car pulled up, a deputy got out, opened the back door, and hauled out two young boys handcuffed together.

  “We didn’t do anything, that’s my uncle’s house, we were only—”

  The deputy laughed. “With three broken windows, and a pile of jewelry and electronics already in your car . . . ?” He marched them into the station fighting and kicking. The three cats slid in behind them, Kit trying so hard not to laugh that she almost got kicked, herself, by the little varmints. The cats fled down the hall past the young officer at the desk who was standing in for EvaJean; he glanced down at them and smiled. The deputy from the sheriff’s department, unfamiliar with MPPD’s casual routine, grinned broadly. Usually the cats were more careful around officers from other departments. Now they sped past the counter as fast as they could run. Behind them the desk clerk started to book the boys while the sheriff’s deputy called their parents.

  On down the hall, Kit and Pan and Dulcie sniffed at Max’s door, listened, then peered in. They did the same at Davis’s office and then Kathleen’s. Not a sign of anyone. Joe Grey’s scent lingered at all three doors. They found the back door closed, both the barred door and the heavy wooden one. They waited in the shadows for some time until the boys were booked and led back to a cell. As the two angry youngsters were pushed into their cage, the cats were through, too, between the bars behind them. They leaped up through the open, barred window as the boys jumped at them and shouted, and they hightailed it across the police lot between parked black-and-whites, following Joe’s scent.

  Crossing the street avoiding slow-moving cars that had dutifully lowered their speed when passing the PD, they were soon up a small vine to the roof that joined Juana Davis’s condo; her second-floor retreat was one of two dozen, worked into a design as complicated as a three-dimensional chessboard. Climbing the bougainvillea to the low roof, they crouched low beneath Juana’s side window.

  Juana had drawn the draperies against any glimpse within. Though with the roofs tilted and angled all around, it would be hard for a prowler to gain that flat area and see in—except for the three cats, crouched below the sill; even with sharp reflections of rising sun from the other, distant apartments, they could peer up below the drape for an occasional look. Now, they pressed their ears to the wall.

  They could hear Chief Harper, Juana Davis, Detective Dallas Garza, and Kathleen. And the low, unfamiliar voice of a woman they didn’t know—then they caught the scent of Joe Grey and heard a short purr behind them. The next instant he was crouched below the sill beside Dulcie, his ears flat, his short tail down, leaving no eye-catching appendage sticking up. Juana had left the drapery slightly open but as the sun moved higher sending a bright gleam off the tangle of roofs, she rose and pulled them fully closed; the dazzle ended. The cats could see only by crowding at a tiny crack in the corner—but they had gotten a glimpse of Maurita. “That,” Joe said, “is the lady of the grave.”

  She lay on the couch, a blanket around her, talking with Captain Harper; her scars and bruises were fading, there were still bandages on her face and ears, and one large scar wrapping her throat. She was nearly as pale as the room itself, which Juana had recently redone. Clear white walls, soft white furniture, stainproof but decorated with a number of multicolored cat hairs, an expensive sisal rug that showed only a few kitty claw marks. It wasn’t a large room, the five officers and Maurita took up all the furniture. Rock’s blanket was folded in the corner where the big silver dog, scenting the cats, was intently sniffing. Dallas told him to be still, then looked again at Maurita.

  “How long have they been at this? You had nothing to do with the first robberies?”

  “I was with him maybe five years. Enough to be part of the last seven thefts . . . Brazil, Colombia, Panama, New York, but every one of them frightened me more. I wanted out. I didn’t know how long they’d been pulling these jobs, but I didn’t like it.

  “With each one he got less loving, soon he was treating me like a slave. He made me dress real refined to do the shopping—pretend-shopping while I made the jewelry inventory. He always had to be sure I had it right, the prices, the value of the gems, always asking questions, when I knew more than he did. I managed a jewelry store for ten years in Panama City.

  “That’s why he wanted me. He’d be nervous, but real loving, until a job was over, until I’d done my part and we’d gotten away clean. Then he’d forget me, treat me like mud. Like a trick dog that, after its act, got put in a kennel and forgotten.”

  Like Courtney will be, Dulcie thought. And Joe and Kit and Pan thought the same.

  “When I got up the nerve to tell him I didn’t want to do the robberies anymore, he blew up. I knew he would, but I wanted out real bad. I had a bag packed. I didn’t like the danger, the tight planning, avoiding cops all the time, watching for store detectives. I didn’t like any of it. We fought a lot between jobs. The other guys didn’t care when he hit me. I was his woman, he could do what he wanted, it was none of their affair.

  “That night when I told him I was leaving him, he beat me really hard.” Her eyes teared up. “I was half unconscious when he dragged me into one of the older cars. I tried to fight but I was already hurt pretty bad. I remember the smell of dirt. I don’t know, maybe I fainted. I was lying on the dirt, I could see fallen trees, night-dark clouds and a smear of moonlight. I heard him digging. I was dizzy, sticky with blood. When he pulled me into the grave I fought him harder. He clutched at my throat, I couldn’t breathe, I was thrashing and kicking him. When I kneed him, he grunted and let go. And then the real pain . . .” She caught her breath. “Pain like knives when he ripped off my earring.”

  At the mention of the earring, tears came to her eyes again, as if the lost piece of jewelry meant far more to her than a mere earring.

  It was then that Kit, listening at the window, sneezed. Rock heard her, and saw a small movement beyond the crack of drapery; he let out a bark and leaped for the window. All four cats reared up, they didn’t realize until too late that their shadows showed through the draperies. Seeing the faint shapes, everyone but Maurita stood up to look. Dulcie, Kit, and Pan fled the scene fast, down the bougainvillea to the sidewalk and they were gone, into the early sun and the fog that crept after it.

  Joe Grey stayed where he was. He strolled to the center of the window and stood tall, scratching at the glass, yowling at Rock’s leaping shadow; the excited Weimaraner could see Joe’s silhouette and could clearly smell him. Dallas rose and took Rock by the collar. His vocabulary, at Rock’s bad manners, was the law’s finest.

  But he wasn’t going to shut the dog up until he let Joe Grey in—the two were pals, housemates, sometime fellow guardians. The detective opened the drapery and the glass and slid back the screen. “What the hell do you want?”

  Joe came flying in, leaping at Rock as if he hadn’t seen him in months; the two wrestled, banging against furniture and uniformed legs until Max and Dallas settled them with a few sharp words and Rock lay down, pressing his head against Max for sympathy. Juana and Kathleen were bent over laughing. Maurita only looked startled, then turned away from where the low rays of the sun shone directly at her, sharpening the scars on her face.

  As Juana rose to more securely draw the draperies, Joe glimpsed Dulcie and Kit and Pan fleeing across the courthous
e roof, flipping their tails with annoyance. They’d be thinking, Too many cats converging all at once, too many cops wondering why, too many cops asking questions.

  Max petted Rock, then sat looking at Maurita. “Can we get to the logistics, to just how he laid out these jobs?”

  He, who? Joe thought, watching the chief. She must have told Max who her attacker was before I got here. If the guy thinks she’s still alive, he’ll keep looking until he finishes her—and Maurita mirrored his thought. “If DeWayne sees me in here he’ll find some way in, and he’ll kill me.”

  DeWayne Luther! Joe thought, sitting up to stare at her, then hastily rolling over. DeWayne Luther! A sharp picture in his mind of Maurita lying battered in that damp and moonlit grave, and now he could see Zeb’s white-haired son bending over her . . . A vision he hadn’t seen but felt as if he had, as if he had seen the killer as well as his victim. On the couch, he stretched out innocently pretending to nap while Maurita gave Max and the detectives details of every crime that she and DeWayne and his partners had committed.

  “And the earring,” Max said. “He must have been really in a rage to rip it off like that.”

  “Those earrings were the only gift he ever gave me, part of our first burglary, from the museum of Panama. They were ancient Peruvian, and valuable. They were among the few pieces that remained when the Spaniards melted down all that beautiful work just for the gold. Did they even know what a real fortune they destroyed? It was the only sign, right at first, that he loved me—or, I thought he did.”

  She said, “A locksmith with an electrician’s skills traveled with us. He quietly cased the lock mechanisms while I assessed the jewelry and handbags and luxury items. Every job went down without a hitch.” She twisted her long black hair. “At least, every robbery since we became a twosome. A twosome,” she said, laughing. “Such as it was. The bastard.”