Cat Bearing Gifts

30

HAVING LOST BIRELY’S attacker, Ryan still didn’t call the department. She wanted Kit out of there first, and safe, before the cops descended on him; they wouldn’t be polite in taking down a killer, if in fact Birely was dead. They’d run his attacker off the road if they needed to, fire at him, do whatever necessary to take him into custody, and Kit would be right in the middle.

She could keep on cruising the village backstreets looking for the Suzuki among the winding, wooded residential lanes, which would, she thought, be an exercise in futility. Or she could go back to Debbie’s, park the Mercedes out of sight, and watch. See if he showed up there—perhaps to return the car, if he hadn’t stolen it. If Debbie had let him use it, then did Debbie have a role in this, whatever it was? Was she into more than shoplifting? Ryan thought angrily. Moving on through the village and up the hill, she parked two blocks above Emmylou’s on a narrow backstreet roofed over with its giant cypress trees, their lower branches reaching out across the street half covering the Mercedes. Getting out and locking the car, she walked on down to Emmylou’s.

The Chevy was still gone, Emmylou would still be at the hospital. Maybe she was being questioned by the police, or maybe she was asking questions of her own. Was she mourning poor Birely now? Ryan wondered. Moving up the back steps, she tried the door but found it locked. She sat down on the top step, in the shadows where she could see down across the street into Debbie’s scraggly yard. Into her scraggly yard, that Debbie had never bothered to clean up. She could see the full expanse of Debbie’s empty drive but no sign of Debbie, no light on in the kitchen. Was Tessa still in there alone, tucked up in bed?

Watching the shadowed bedroom, she began to make out a silhouette, a small figure looking out. As if Tessa were kneeling up on the bed, looking out watchfully at the neighborhood, much as she herself was doing.

She was scanning the empty streets, the empty yards, when Debbie’s station wagon came into view slipping slowly along a side street. The driver didn’t turn onto Debbie’s street, he paused at the corner and then turned, circling back, moving down along a stand of pines. She watched him turn into a narrow, overgrown property two blocks to the south. He pulled down the long, weedy drive to the back, where a one-car garage stood beside the forlorn gray house. Parking at one side of the drive, two wheels on the yellowed grass, he nosed the Suzuki into a pile of scrap lumber, gray with age. The minute he opened the driver’s door a dark streak exploded out behind him, fled across the lumber pile and up into a pine tree. Ryan eased back with a sigh of relief. Among the dark foliage, she could barely see Kit slip out onto a branch, to peer down.

Stepping out of the station wagon, the man moved to the old-fashioned garage door and stood fiddling with the lock. She could imagine the hinges rusted, the cracked driveway beneath stained with scrape marks where the old door swung out. With his attention diverted, Ryan moved on down the stairs, had started down the hill, heading in his direction, when she heard the ratcheting squeal of wood on concrete as he eased the door open. Within, beyond the open door, something dark loomed. The hood of a dark car, its lines sleek but its narrow chrome and its headlights dulled as if with dirt; they were the smooth lines of the Lincoln. Snatching her phone from her pocket, she punched in 911.

She ended the call just as fast, clicking off.

She didn’t want the law there, taking over the stolen car, declaring it out of bounds to everyone but the department, impounding it for evidence. Not with what was there—what she hoped was still hidden there behind the door panels. Instead, she hit Clyde’s number.

When she got no answer she left a message, irritated, and clicked off. Turning away among Emmylou’s trees, she headed back to the Mercedes, through the overgrown yards. Slipping in behind the wheel, she hoped he wouldn’t hear the engine start, or would think it was just some neighbor pulling out. Easing down the street and onto his street, she couldn’t see the garage now, it was on the other side of the forlorn gray cottage; not until she was level with the house did it come into view again.

As she turned into the drive, the dropping sun was in her eyes, it was hard to see inside past the Lincoln. She could sense him watching her, as if maybe he stood deeper in, where the shadows were dense. Letting the engine idle, she hit Clyde’s number again.

Still no answer. She eased on down the drive toward the garage, glancing up toward the pine tree where Kit crouched among the thin branches. Stay put, Kit, just stay where you are. He came out of the garage fast, heading for her car as if he meant to jerk the door open. She didn’t kill the engine, she let it idle. As she hit the master lock she dropped the phone, felt frantically along the seat for it. When she looked again he had moved to the edge of the drive. She watched him grab up a short length of two-by-four, and turn. He came at her fast, swinging at the window, his pale eyes flat and mean. She ducked, fishing under the seat for some weapon, maybe a wrench left by one of the mechanics. She found nothing, but then scrabbling deeper she found the phone. He swung his makeshift club, and she covered her face. The window shattered, crazing into a pattern like snowflakes. She gunned the engine, put it in gear, gave it the gas again as if to back away from him up the drive.

Instead she sent the Mercedes leaping forward, braking only as her front bumper rammed the back of the Town Car, solidly blocking it. He came at her again, striking at the broken window, glass flew around her in a cascade of particles. He hit it again and reached through, grappling for the lock. She snatched up the phone, brought the end of it down hard on his wrist. He yelped and drew back and then lunged at the door. He had reached in, grabbing for her, when darkness exploded from above him from the roof—and the world was filled with cats, a tangle of clawing, screaming cats.

EARLIER IN THE day, having searched the neighborhood for the Lincoln, Joe and Pan had given up at last and headed away into the village. Their fur smelled of juniper bushes, every garage they’d investigated stunk with overgrown foliage crowding its old walls. Where they’d been able to find a thin crack beneath a tight-fitting door, they’d detected only the smells of empty oil cans, caked dirt, and mice. When they’d leaped up at dirty garage windows they’d seen nothing within but a broken chair, old cardboard boxes filled with who knew what refuse, and a rat-eaten couch, the cotton stuffing leaking out across the concrete. They’d searched for the Lincoln until both were cranky and hissing at each other, then they hit the rooftops hoping to see the Town Car parked on some farther-off, out-of-the-way lane. But soon, growing discouraged even with that futile effort, they simply ran, working off their accumulated frustration. In the center of the village they raced up the stairs of the courthouse clock tower, to the parapet high above.

Leaping to the rail, they had prowled along it looking down at the rooftops and crowded streets, focusing on each long black car they spotted, but knowing that this, too, was an exercise in futility. They were circling the rail yet again when Dulcie came racing up the stairs, looking up at them. She paused on the little tile balcony.

“There’s been a murder,” she said, “at the hospital. Those men staying up behind Emmylou’s, looks like one killed the other. Killed him right there in the ICU. Emmylou’d found the one man hurt, lying in that stone house behind her place, she called the ambulance and . . .”

The two toms dropped down to the tiles beside her, giving her their full attention.

“Pedric heard it all from Emmylou when they took him back to the ICU before they moved him to his new room. He got a glimpse of the man from his gurney, he was just being tucked up in bed again when the whole place exploded in an uproar and Pedric saw him running out. Pedric swore the guy was wearing his sport coat, the tweed one. He and Emmylou called Lucinda, she called and told Wilma, and I came to find you. Emmylou said Ryan ran out chasing the guy, that a nurse just coming back from her break saw them, she knew Ryan, she said the man took off in a battered brown station wagon. Debbie’s car? The nurse said Ryan chased him in a silver Mercedes, I don’t know where she got that car but the nurse swore it was Ryan. If he has Debbie’s car and goes back there, and Ryan follows him there, if that’s where he was headed, and Ryan’s all alone . . .”

“Come on,” Joe said. He leaped down the stairs hitting every fourth step, but halfway down the last flight, before he hit the street, he sailed onto the adjoining roof. The three cats, racing away over the peaks, their heads filled with questions, made straight across the village and up the hill toward Debbie’s hoping he was going there, where they could help Ryan if she needed help, and where they could summon the law. They were a block from Debbie’s cottage when they saw, between the pines, Kit crouched on the edge of a roof looking over, precarious and intent.

Leaping the chasms between cottages, they gained the roof beside her, to the accompaniment of breaking glass below as the man in the tweed coat swung his crude club, then yelped and drew back, then lunged at the door, reaching in grabbing for Ryan. The cats sprang, exploding down on him in a whirlwind of teeth and claws.

He twisted, shouting and flailing, and dropped the two-by-four. Fighting them off, reaching down for it, he lost his balance. Ryan was out of the car, pounding at him. He went down under her blows. She snatched the two-by-four away, and kicked him in the groin. He curled into a ball, whimpering. She yelled at the cats to back off, but Kit kept at him, raking and biting, she stopped only when Ryan pulled her away, forcing her clinging claws out of his arm.

Kneeling, Ryan held the end of the two-by-four hard against his throat as she frisked him. He looked at the four cats crowding over him growling, their teeth bared, and he lay still. She had pulled two packets of hundred-dollar bills from his pockets, stuffing them into the front of her zipped jacket, when he struck out again, hit Ryan in the face, and struggled to his feet. He ran—but not to the Lincoln, it was useless to him, blocked by Ryan’s car. He headed for the station wagon, jerked the door open, Ryan could see the keys dangling in the ignition. She grabbed Kit away as he swung in. Clutching Kit, she moved away fast as he gunned the engine, dodging the car as it shot backward burning rubber, careened the length of the drive, racing backward into the street, and took off.

Ryan held Kit tight against her, both of them shaking with rage. He was gone, but the Lincoln was safe. Her heart pounding, Ryan flipped open her phone.

This time, Clyde answered. “Sorry,” he said, “I was talking to the supplier, he thought he had the part, but he doesn’t.”

“You’re at the shop?”

“Just leaving.”

“I’m a couple of blocks south of the cottage, down from Debbie’s. Old gray house with the garage way at the back? Can you bring me those two tools your body guys use, to take the panels off a car door?”

“You found the Lincoln.”

“We did.”

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she said.

“You call the department?”

“Not until you bring the tools.”

“On my way.”

“Pick up some gloves,” she said.

He laughed, and hung up. It wasn’t twenty minutes until he pulled into the drive in her king cab. The cats, crowding into the dim garage behind them, peered up into the Lincoln as Clyde, putting on a pair of cotton gloves to prevent leaving fingerprints, removed the door panels. Lifting them off one at a time and reaching in, he began to remove the small white boxes, and he lifted out the little plastic containers of coins, too, all tightly sealed. Ryan placed each item carefully in a stained paint bucket that she’d taken from the back of her truck.

But it was Joe and Pan together who, leaping up into the backseat of the Lincoln, rooting among the tightly packed bundles, found the scent of the old musty bills. Sniffing at bolts of fabric, at boxes and bags scented of far places, the two tomcats rooted down under the Greenlaws’ diverse and expensive purchases, and came up grinning.

“Try here,” Joe told Clyde.

Pulling packages away until he was able to examine the center console beneath, Clyde pulled down the armrest, revealing the small black tray with its cell phone connections.

“There,” Joe said, sniffing at the small square hole in the front. “Musty. The money’s there. Take the screws out.” Already Ryan was headed for the truck. She returned with a Phillips screwdriver, which she handed to Clyde. He unscrewed the tray and lifted it out.

There it was, the rest of the money, thick packets of hundreds stuffed tightly into the small space. He handed them out to Ryan, she packed them in the stained bucket atop the little boxes, filling it to the dented edge. Turning away to the king cab, she locked the bucket in one of the metal tool compartments along the side, arranging heavy coils of electric drop cords in front. Only then, locking the compartment, did she call the dispatcher.

She told Mabel they’d found the Greenlaws’ stolen Lincoln, and gave her the location. But as they talked, she watched Kit and Pan, up on the roof again sitting near but not looking at each other, both staring away into space—looking as if they wanted to make up, but both still too stubborn. She could see only a touch of Kit’s superior “I’m right, you’re wrong” expression. Pan, though he glanced sideways at Kit, sat tall and macho, still with a “I’m not changing my mind” look in his amber eyes. Both cats so hardheaded, Kit refusing to understand Pan’s hunger for new adventure, Pan just as obstinate, wanting Kit to thrill to his view of the world. Neither cat, even after their bold and concerted attack on the thief, willing to understand the other. And Ryan could only watch, disappointed with them both.