Cat Bearing Gifts

24

FROM HIGH ABOVE the stone cottage among the cypress trees Vic watched that woman contractor, that Ryan Flannery, back her red pickup out of Debbie’s drive and take off. He’d stashed the sleeping bags deep in the bushes, their dirty clothes rolled up inside, had pushed the bundle under the tangled branches of a deadfall. Now, the minute the pickup left, he moved on down through the woods, watching for that cop car that had pulled by Debbie’s place, half expecting it to come back.

But maybe they weren’t looking for him, were just cruising the area, a mindless routine while they sucked down their doughnuts and coffee. They hadn’t stopped at Emmylou’s, and hadn’t looked up toward the stone house—but after Emmylou called that ambulance, you could bet your bippy MPPD would show up sooner or later, nosing around.

Moving on down onto the empty streets of the small neighborhood, he turned up Debbie’s driveway, pausing beside her station wagon to look it over. Old Suzuki was ready to fall apart. He looked in to see if she’d left the keys but she hadn’t. The car was a mess inside, even to him, and he wasn’t real picky how he kept a car. He was wondering if the old heap would hold together for the few hours he needed it when movement above on the garage roof startled him and he swung around to look.

Couple of cats up there pawing at something in the metal gutter, maybe a dead bird. Nasty beasts. Turning away toward the front door, the only door, he saw a light on in the kitchen but, approaching the window, he couldn’t see Debbie inside. He didn’t knock or call out, he moved on up the three steps, tried the knob, found the door unlocked, and pushed on through.

JOE AND PAN watched the man enter. On the little fitful breeze they couldn’t catch his scent, but they looked at each other, puzzled. He was familiar, but different. He was well dressed and his clothes were familiar, too. Even from the roof they could hear the scuff of his loafers across the linoleum of the cottage. They heard him pause at the kitchen and then head for the bedroom, his rubber soles grating across something gritty. Quickly they scrambled down the pine tree to the ground, and only then did they find his scent. “The guy from the stone shack,” Joe said, “the one with all the hair.” And, as they sniffed around the door, a mix of familiar smells hit them that made their fur stand up: the ripe male smell from the stone house overlaid, now, with the smell of lime shaving lotion and, making them hiss in consternation, the personal scent of Pedric Greenlaw, distinctive and familiar. From within, they heard Debbie yip, the beginning of a startled scream.

The man’s voice was low and flat. “It’s just me.”

Debbie’s voice was cranky. “You could have knocked,” she snapped. “What do you want? You scared me half to death.”

The cats, pushing the door in, slipped on inside, past the kitchen and into the shadows outside the bedroom door. The two stood in the middle of the bedroom, the man’s back to them. Debbie had turned from Tessa’s bed, scowling up at him. She didn’t seem frightened, just annoyed. “You have my money?”

“I got it.”

Joe studied the guy. He was wearing Pedric’s tan slacks with the spot on one cuff, Pedric’s tweed sport coat. The guy’s brown hair was newly trimmed, the skin at the back of his neck as white as a baby’s bottom. His cheeks and chin were pale, too, and he’d used too much of Pedric’s Royall Lyme shaving lotion.

“You got yourself cleaned up fancy,” she said. “What’s the occasion?”

“You like it?” he said, leaning close to her.

Debbie laughed, a squeaky little giggle. “I hope you didn’t spend my money on that fancy sport coat!”

“No way, baby. The money’s all here.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, crowding the sleeping child as if she were only another pillow. The cats, crouched beside the door, watched him remove a wad of greenbacks from his jacket pocket. Using the bed as a table, he began to count out hundred-dollar bills, fanning the stack like a deck of cards and then dealing them out across the covers. Debbie moved closer, watching greedily. Behind them, the cats slipped through the room into the shadows of the baby stroller, beside the five grocery bags—a swift flash of gray and red, their paws silent on the grainy floor. Behind the cats, the closet door stood just ajar. With a silent paw Pan eased it open, preparing for escape, watching Vic warily.

Dealing out the bills, Vic said, “Like to borrow your car.”

“Why would you need my car? Where’s your truck?”

“Just for a little while, an hour or so. Had some trouble with the truck.”

“Where is it? What kind of trouble? You wreck it?”

“It’s in the shop.”

“So why do you need my car?”

Laying down the last hundred-dollar bill and smoothing it out, he drew her close to the bed and put his arm around her. “Just for an hour or two, baby. Some errands I need to run.” He picked up the stack of bills, tapped it against his palm to align the edges, and handed it to her. “Twenty-four hundred bucks. I did pretty good. Agreed?”

“I’d hoped to get more than this,” Debbie said crossly. “Those Gucci bags . . .”

“Those Gucci bags were last year’s models. I did a hell of a lot better than you’d have done, trying to peddle that lot to someone here in the village or trying to sell it through some consignment shop. Or on eBay. That’d bring the cops down on you.”

Behind the stroller, Joe and Pan smiled at each other. The actual sale of the stolen luxury items put a nice footnote to Debbie’s thieving ways.

But what the cats didn’t understand was the connection. How did Vic and Debbie know each other? He and his friend couldn’t have moved here to the village just to act as her go-between, where was the profit in that?

Had they just happened on her, down in this adjoining neighborhood, and got acquainted? Maybe Vic liked her looks, started coming on to her. One thing led to another, and first thing you know, he’s easing in on her profits. They listened to Debbie argue about the amount of money he’d offered, but then rudely she snatched it up, pulled up her sweater, and stuffed it in her bra.

“What about the car?” he said. “Just for a little while, baby.”

“I don’t think so, I need it for the children, I need to pick Vinnie up at school.”

“School’s four blocks away. Vinnie can walk.” Vic hugged her close, his voice teasing. “Come on, baby. You got to have more stuff for the fence by now, with your clever ways. What’s in them grocery bags over there, under the bread and cookies? You want me to handle that lot? I will if you loan me the car.”

He argued and wheedled until at last she gave in. “On one condition,” she said, and now there was a smile in her voice. She turned, indicating the bulging grocery bags. “Load those in the back under the blankets, get them out of here until that contractor’s done nosing around.”

“And them cops,” he said. “You wouldn’t want them cops to see all this, the ones that were cruising up here.”

Debbie shrugged. As if she wasn’t worried about cops.

“Will you be going back up to the city again, when you get your truck?”

“Might.”

“When will that be?”

“Two, three days for the truck to be ready.”

“Take that lot with you, sell it for me like you said, and you can borrow the car for two hours. No more.”

In the bed, the cover stirred and Tessa peered sleepily out, watching Vic and her mother. The little girl, Joe thought, observed more than people imagined. Vic said, “When I get the truck, what if I head for the city with your stuff but don’t come back this way for a while?”

“Send me a money order,” Debbie said smartly.

“You trust me with the money, baby?”

“You brought me this much,” she said softly, picking up her car keys, looking toward the stroller.

Panicked, the cats slid into the closet. From among the tangle of shoes and dropped clothes, they watched Debbie hand Vic the bags, loading four into his arms, piling the last atop the others in the stroller, watched her wheel the stroller out, escorting him to her car.

Slipping out of the closet, Joe Grey followed. But Pan leaped up onto the bed beside Tessa, worrying over the child, sniffing at her to determine just how sick she was.

Outside, skinning up into the branches of the pine, Joe watched Vic load up the grocery bags and cover them as Debbie had instructed, watched him back the station wagon out, turning downhill in a direction that would put him on Highway One, and watched Debbie turn back to the house with a smug and self-satisfied smile. No stolen goods on the premises now, no evidence to any crime.

Was this the last of her shoplifting, had she paid attention to what Ryan had told her? Or was she thinking Ryan would get busy with other matters and forget her threat? Was it possible that Debbie, now that she’d been caught red-handed, would stop stealing and look for a job?

Not likely, Joe thought. Not bloody likely. Clawing farther up the pine tree to the roof, he watched Debbie head for the garage with the empty stroller. Maybe she meant to fold it up and stick it in the corner behind her trash and boxes, get it out of the way, too. Behind her, Pan slipped out the door and scrambled to the roof beside him.

“Why does he need her car?” the red tom said. “Has he already sold the Lincoln? Sold it with Kate’s treasure inside, with millions of dollars hidden in there just inches from his greedy fingers and he doesn’t have a clue, no idea he’s dumped a fortune for a few hundred bucks, to some scuzzy dealer?”

“You find that amusing? You think that’s funny, if he let Kate’s hoard get away where no one will ever find it, where not even the law might get a line on it?”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Pan said contritely. “MPPD will find it. If he has sold it, it’ll just take them longer.”

“Or maybe,” Joe said, “maybe he found the jewels before he sold it, took the door panels off himself to hide his stolen money, and found everything. Maybe right now he has Kate’s treasure stashed somewhere else. Or,” he said, “is the Lincoln still here somewhere with Kate’s treasure still in it?” He looked up the hill to the woods, where the narrow dirt drive led down to the stone shack. “Could he have gotten the Town Car down through the trees? Would it have fit in that narrow shed?”

“Like a rat stuck in a jam jar,” Pan said. “None of us were here to see him hide it, we were all up at the wreck. Except my dad,” he said. “Except Misto.”

“Vic’s hardly had time to sell a car,” Joe said. “Maybe everything is in the shed, and he’s afraid to drive the Lincoln, afraid Harper’s men will spot it, maybe that’s why he wants Debbie’s car. Let’s have a look before he and his pal take off for good.”

“Maybe the other guy’s too hurt to travel. Kit said the man in the wrecked truck never stopped moaning, as if he were injured real bad.”

Approaching the shed, looking up at its solid door, Joe leaped up at the padlock, striking and pawing at it. The big lock swung heavily but was closed tight. Pan tried, but with no better luck. Together they clawed at the door itself, trying to pull it away enough to see under or see through a crack at the side, but the heavy construction of bolted planks wouldn’t budge. But then when they sniffed along the molding they caught Vic’s fresh scent, and when they pressed their noses to the thinnest crack between door and molding they could smell a faint breath from within that made them smile: a distinct new-car smell, the smell of fine leather seats, the same comforting aroma as when they’d ridden in there with Kit, the smell of the Greenlaws’ Town Car.

And when they examined the dirt apron of the drive itself, the faintest tire tracks led up to the shed door, the sharp tread of new tires just visible on the hard earth. Another set led away again to vanish where the narrow drive was covered with rotted leaves, where only vague indentations compressed the damp mulch. And only now, sniffing along the ground, did they catch Misto’s scent where the old yellow cat had indeed padded along following the track of the Lincoln.

“Did they bring the Lincoln directly here from the wreck?” Pan said. “While we were headed up the mountain with the Damens, did my pa see those two men hide it in here?” He lifted his nose from the old cat’s scent. “While you and Dulcie and I, and Rock and the Damens, were setting off to find Kit, did Misto know all along where those two men had holed up? He couldn’t know who they were or what they’d done, and he couldn’t know the Lincoln was stolen, but he knew where it was,” he said, smiling.

“He knew they’d put a car in there,” Joe said. “But would he recognize the Greenlaws’ nice Town Car if it has heavy damage, dents and crumpled fenders, dirt and gravel from the landslide? And now,” he said, “is it still parked in there behind those plank doors, or is only the smell there, and the Town Car gone again?”

“Secrets within secrets,” Pan said as they moved away, wondering where else to look for the stolen vehicle. “This old place reeks of secrets. Only a few months ago, you and Dulcie find Sammie’s body buried right down there under her own house. Then Emmylou inherits the house and starts finding money hidden in the walls. Those two tramps come here looking for it, too. And then those same two men wreck the Greenlaws’ car or are involved in the wreck, one of them attacks Pedric and Lucinda and could as well have killed them both.”

“And,” Joe said thoughtfully, “even Sammie’s death itself might be tied in. It was her money.”

“Tied in how?

“The department’s file on Sammie says she was killed because she saw Debbie’s husband, Erik Kraft, kill Debbie’s younger sister after he got her pregnant. Killed his own wife’s little sister. But did Erik kill Sammie because of the money, too? Could he have known Sammie had hidden money? If he found out somehow, could he have tried to find it himself, tried to force her to tell him where it was? When she wouldn’t, he killed her?”

“Maybe,” Pan said thoughtfully. “I guess we’ll never know. Whatever happened, Erik Kraft is scum, I always hated him. With a father like that and a mother like Debbie, it’s no wonder Tessa has problems. Do you think,” he said, “Vic hid the Lincoln nearby, where he can get at it in a hurry?”

Both cats glanced down the hill where the little cottages stood crowded close together beneath their overgrown cypress trees. “Come on,” Joe said, “it’s worth a look, half those places are empty.” And off they went, past Debbie’s house, down among the FOR RENT signs and the neglected foreclosures, to peer into garage windows and under doors, searching for a car worth maybe twenty thousand but loaded with treasure worth many times more.