Cat Chase the Moon

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Just outside the condo in the easing rain, Rock sat as he was told but was still primed to attack as Crowley fitted DeWayne with leg irons, locked his hands and feet together, then made the emergency call for the medics. Jimmie put pressure on the bleeding, but Rock had not cut a vein. Hastily Jimmie bound DeWayne’s wound and then ignored him as they examined Rock, making sure this fine dog was all right.

  Maurita wished Rock had killed DeWayne, that he lay, now, deep in the grave that he had dug for her.

  Buffin hopped out the window, stood looking with disgust at the two captives, then turned away to lick Rock’s face. The medics’ van arrived as Juana called Clyde then called the vet clinic. Four medics came up the front stairs and out through the window. They examined Stope first, lifted him onto a stretcher and carried him down to the van. Before they finished with DeWayne, Maurita and her two guards were out the back door racing for the squad left parked, piling in, getting Maurita and Courtney settled. Crowley driving as they sped through the back streets heading for the Pamillon ruins.

  Joe Grey saw them as he returned to the condo. He was tempted to leap down into the cop car and ride along, but somehow this moment belonged to Maurita and Courtney. He paused on the condo’s window ledge, nuzzled Davis, and he was gone, heading home. Behind him, Juana closed the window watching the squad car disappear, hugging Buffin against her and holding Rock’s collar as he fussed, wanting to follow.

  In the squad car, Jimmie sat in the back, Maurita hunched down on the seat beside him out of sight, cuddling Courtney. Before they left the condo she had returned to the bedroom, pulled on a warm coat, and opened the lock of Juana’s dresser drawer that she had jimmied earlier. She reached back beneath a stack of papers, removed a small revolver, checked the load and slipped it in her pocket; it must be a spare that Juana seldom used, but it was kept clean and loaded.

  If she got caught, she would put Juana in big trouble. But if she swore in court that she’d jimmied the lock and stolen it, that she’d sniffed at the dresser and smelled gun oil . . . would that clear the detective?

  But if they found DeWayne and if she could kill him, she’d be the one in trouble.

  She didn’t care, she wanted him dead.

  When Crowley turned sharply up a narrow street, the careening car threw her against Jimmie’s shoulder, he put his arm around her to support her. He had to smile at the way the calico cat clutched her paws around the young woman’s neck, clinging to her fellow escapee.

  They came out of the village through a tangle of twisted roads and small cottages onto Highway One and turned north, in the direction of the old Pamillon estate. The rain, which had come and gone all day, now had nearly stopped again, had turned into a drizzle and soon to a mist. High up, wind must be blowing hard, driving the clouds away. Soon they could see hints of moonlight and then a glimpse of the full moon.

  The moon, Courtney thought, the full moon means good fortune. She glanced up at Maurita and hoped it shone for them both. And now they could see the mansion rising higher up the hills. Even the two cops admired the sudden view as they watched, as well, for anyone following them.

  The stone of the ancient mansion shone pale in the moonlight. The once-neglected dwelling was very different from when Kate first bought it and began to remodel it, dreaming of the museum she hoped it would one day become. Glass had been restored in the front windows of the jutting front wing that had stood open to the weather for so many years. The feral cats had often hung out there, watching to leap down on the small game below, enjoying the view of village and sea, sleeping on an ancient, moldering sofa. Now there was a new ceiling, new rafters, fresh white paint; but mostly glass to enhance the interior. The far wings of the compound were still in ruins; the feral cats thrived there, dining on rats and field mice. The wild little cats had made friends with Kate and Scotty, and Kate knew they would be kind to Courtney. Redheaded, red-bearded Scott Flannery was Kate’s new husband; they had been friends for years, their romance had been sudden and surprising. Scotty was Ryan Damen’s uncle and was, as well, her building foreman.

  The upstairs and downstairs of the large front wing would be the main art galleries. The one-story wing on the far side had been rebuilt into an airy but cozy apartment. The remaining rooms, as they were finished, would offer more space for special exhibits—but an environment nothing like the Seavers’ too-fancy plan.

  They pulled up beside the cat shelter, which now had a tall stone wall between it and the mansion, perhaps to give it privacy from the galleries. This, plus another stone wall on the land below, partially concealing a little wooden house, made the property seem drawn together into a more handsome unit, made it blend more cozily among the hills. Jimmie glanced at Maurita, imagining her living in the empty house; he wondered what she would do if she escaped DeWayne, if he were locked in prison for a long stretch, leaving her free to make a new life.

  Kate came out to greet them. Levi’s, work boots, she was all carpenter today—some carpenter with that strikingly beautiful face and tousled blond hair. Scotty came to join them. They’d had a short honeymoon, then had gotten back to work on their apartment and on the cat shelter.

  Kate looked into the car, greeting Maurita gently, then studying Courtney’s amber eyes. “So you escaped, too. What could be so valuable,” she said slyly, “about an ordinary calico cat?”

  Courtney looked back at her, equally sly and amused. Not everyone present knew that certain cats could speak. Kate said, “What crazy plan could Seaver have had for her, that made him and those thugs chase her all over the village? He has to be insane.”

  Earlier, in the squad car, before Crowley turned onto the narrow road that led up to the mansion, Maurita had said, “Kate will hide the little calico where Seaver will never find her, she’ll take good care of her. But I’m coming back with you.”

  “The hell you are,” Jimmie said. “Why do you think we brought you out here? Not to hide just the cat but to hide you! What the hell, Maurita. Max wants you away from DeWayne, not there in town with him. You want to end up in another grave, a permanent one?”

  She went pale and very still—and beautiful, Jimmie thought, despite the fading bruises. The look she gave him was unreadable. “They’re getting ready to pull off the Saks job, you knew it would be soon. On our way out of the village, didn’t you see those old gray cars pulled in behind the motel, the cars they use for robberies, the ones they usually leave scattered around town? This has to be the night.”

  Jimmie glanced up at Crowley, who was looking back at him in the mirror. Of course they had seen them. Crowley had already made the call so Maurita wouldn’t hear, texting skillfully with his big farmer’s hands, a talent that always amazed Jimmie. By dark tonight Max would have their units in place, far better hidden than DeWayne’s crew would be.

  “That’s why he kept me around in the first place, to make sure they didn’t miss the best jewelry, the finest designs and highest quality stones. The best antiques, that he stole on the East Coast and sent to his brothers, the Luther boys passed them on to Seaver. I had to pick them out, do the shipping to a storage unit. DeWayne has no taste, no training. He always made me stay with him, there was no way I could shake them, there was always one of the drivers or DeWayne practically on top of me, even outside a restroom door. He kept me like a slave, made me do all the estimates and inventories—until the night they finished casing the village, settled on Saks, and sat around the motel drinking beer, planning their moves. Suddenly I’d had enough. I got up, I told him I was finished, and ran out. Didn’t stop to pack anything or even grab my purse, I just got out.”

  “He comes after you and nearly kills you,” Jimmie snapped. “So now you want to go back and help him rob Saks. You help him pull off this heist, and then he kills you.”

  “No. I thought . . . I know all their moves, their exact plans. I thought I could help you, that I could watch, maybe slip inside if you’d give me a phone . . .”

  “You already told Harp
er every detail. What else do we need? What do you . . . ?”

  She was crying. When she fished in her pocket for a tissue, holding Courtney close and drawing her jacket around them, that was when Jimmie saw the outline of the gun. She saw him looking.

  He studied her for a long time. “I won’t ask any questions. If you meant to slip in among them as they loot the place, if you meant to kill DeWayne in there, you’re putting yourself in big trouble.” He reached to touch her face. Even crying, her dark eyes were beautiful. “Maurita, I want you to promise to stay up here at the mansion and do as we say. As Kate and Scotty say. Will you show it to me?”

  Frowning, she removed the revolver carefully, aiming it away from Jimmie and the cat.

  “Juana’s Smith and Wesson.”

  “I took it from the dresser. I thought . . . I wanted . . .”

  “Are you going to give it to me willingly, or do I have to take it from you and maybe get one of us shot?” He looked at her tenderly. “Maurita, I’ll have to take the gun eventually. Juana will have to know, you’ll have to give it back to her.” She could feel Courtney stiffen, ready to break from her grasp. Jimmie said, “We have to tell Max. I don’t keep secrets from the chief or from anyone in the department—except EvaJean,” he said, grinning.

  He touched her face. “Before this is over, if you don’t mess it up, we’ll have DeWayne in jail and then federal prison. With his rap sheet, count the years. He might never get out, you’ll be free of him. You shoot him now, you’ll find yourself in a cell for a long time.”

  She looked at him stubbornly. She wanted to kill DeWayne herself, she wanted to hurt DeWayne, hurt him bad. She started to slip the gun back in her pocket.

  Jimmie had it before she could blink, her wrist bent back, her other arm twisted and helpless. Courtney had fled under the seat.

  Jimmie opened the revolver’s cylinder and removed the bullets. He dropped the gun in an evidence bag, the bullets in another, and put both in his pocket. “Scotty and Kate will keep you safe, they’re both armed—legally,” he said wryly. “Keep you safe so you can testify in court. That should damage DeWayne more than shooting him.” When he gently turned her face toward him and kissed her on the forehead, Courtney crept out and sat at her feet, watching. Thinking about the ways of humans. Were they so different from the ways of cats? What would it be like to be human? What would it be like to feel the power of that tender look?

  27

  Zeb Luther was home from the hospital by mid-afternoon—if you could call that fusty apartment home. Hospitals were so damn slow, with all their paperwork. Riding in the backseat of Thelma’s Volvo with Mindy beside him, he had his walker folded in the trunk; not that he intended to use it. “I’m not crippled. Ain’t no broken leg, no need for that contraption.”

  Joe Grey sat across the street in his tower watching Mindy help the old man to the curb and Thelma wrestle out the walker as if it weighed a ton; he watched Zebulon manage the four front steps just fine without any hospital equipment, leaving the walker propped against the rail.

  Thelma scowled at Mindy. “You can get him some lunch or an early supper. Both of you better eat, there’s peanut butter and jelly, and milk if it hasn’t gone sour. Then Grandpa might want to lie down.”

  “I had peanut butter and jelly in the hospital until it’s running out my ears. And why would I want to lay down, I’ve been in that damned bed for three days. Mindy and I will take a walk.”

  Thelma made a rude comment and left the house saying something about groceries.

  Thus the neighborhood disturbances began again, bursting forth from within, quite audible at all hours as Grandpa argued that he was going home—to his own home—as Thelma and Varney shouted at him, and as neighbors walked the street staring in, then began calling the station; as the dispatcher sent out an officer on a domestic that ended in nothing but a warning. Zebulon was so loud, and Varney’s language so vile that, after the second domestic call, the responding officer threatened to take them in. Thelma managed to talk him out of it because Grandpa was just home from the hospital and how could she take care of him in jail?

  Officer Wrigley frowned. “One more complaint, Grandpa goes back to the hospital and the rest of you to jail.”

  “Not my little girl,” Thelma howled. “You can’t put . . .”

  “She goes to Children’s Services,” Wrigley said. As he left, Thelma swore and slammed the door behind him. When she headed for her bedroom, Varney came down the hall wearing wrinkled jeans and an old jacket and stomped out of the house; who knew where he went? Joe didn’t hear his car start.

  Mindy and Zeb didn’t hear it, either, but they heard Varney go out the front door. He did that sometimes, left his car at home. Mindy looked out the window, saw him walking away, up the hill toward the freeway.

  When the house was quiet, when they knew Varney was gone, and thought that Thelma slept, Grandpa and Mindy, alone in Mindy’s room, packed a few necessities in a small duffel and hid it under his bed. They went up the hall to the kitchen and as Zeb listened for Thelma, Mindy hastily packed some food in two grocery bags. She made some canned-ham sandwiches, taking two back to her room for their supper. They went to bed fully dressed. Whether or not they slept, Joe Grey himself dozed off.

  Around midnight, Mindy put her ear to Thelma’s door making sure her mother still slept; she slipped into the room as silent as a mouse and lifted Thelma’s car keys from the dresser. Zebulon fetched the grocery bags from the kitchen broom closet and they fled the house.

  The sound of a car starting woke Joe, he rose up among the pillows to see Thelma’s parking lights on, and Zeb at the wheel. He watched Mindy hop in with an armload of blankets. The two grocery bags were already on the backseat, with the duffel, and Joe Grey smiled. Zeb Luther was having his way, he and Mindy were going home. Oh, wouldn’t Thelma pitch a fit!

  The rain was gone but the clouds still hung thick covering the moon, the night so black he could hardly see where street and parked cars met. Only up the block past a few dark cottages and shops did faint lights shine where the shopping plaza stretched away behind his own house: softly illuminated courtyard, subtly lit first-floor display windows. And on the dark street, only the trail of Zebulon’s taillights headed toward the freeway. His dashboard lights were off, and he must be driving with only his parking lights. He’d be lucky not to crash into a parked car before he reached traffic and had to turn the headlamps higher. The village was so still, the only movement Joe could see was Thelma’s “borrowed” car creeping along . . .

  But when he looked again he saw movement at the front of the plaza, faint lights moving inside Saks’s elegant second floor.

  Leaving his warm cushions, Joe leaped up onto the top of his tower. From that height, perched on its slanted shingles, he could easily see past the roof of his own house. Yes, faint lights moving deep within Saks’s second-floor display windows, the faintest of soft blue lights. Deeper in, black shadows moved behind the fashionably posed models. And in front of Saks, on Ocean Avenue, three old gray cars were parked half on the sidewalk with their backs to Saks’s front door. Tonight was the night.

  Dropping down from the top of his tower, Joe galloped across the bedroom roof and dropped to the kitchen roof; he jumped down to the barbecue counter and around the patio wall that Ryan had designed and built. Here he made a long leap to the top of the higher wall that separated the back of their property, and the entire residential block, from the plaza.

  From that wall he could see behind the plaza buildings to the wide strip where buses and trucks could pull off the side street and park during the day. Four tour buses were parked there now, effectively concealing the back of Saks from the street, their occupants most likely tucked in for the night at the several motels that stood among the trees and village shops. Between the buses and Saks, two large black limos had been squeezed in close to the store’s delivery doors, their lights out, nearly invisible in the blackness. Was this a new twist, DeWayne had spl
it up the cars and the retreat routes? Maybe thinking that Maurita had told the department how he usually operated: all out at once, through one door, loaded down with their loot, gone before the cops had a clue?

  Now, there was not a cop in sight, in front or in back of Saks. Not a squad car, not a single foot patrol that Joe could see standing in the shadows. He was about to spin around and head home to the phone when, through the upstairs store windows, lights flashed and the shadows moved fast in one direction, converging at the back, hauling cumbersome bags. They disappeared downward as if on service stairs. Where the hell were the cops? The men came out the back of the building, piled their black plastic bags into the limos, swung in themselves and were gone, turning left to Ocean Avenue then right, heading up the hill for the freeway. He heard the cars in front start up and follow them, those figures so stealthy he hadn’t seen them. And still not a cop anywhere. He watched the line of cars turn south onto the freeway, and Joe Grey sped for home.

  Bursting into the kitchen through Rock’s dog door and leaping to the counter, he had knocked off the phone’s speaker, forgetting that this call would be ID’d, when up on the freeway he heard tires squeal and sirens scream. He pushed the phone back in place, realizing only then how close the snitch had come to getting caught.