Cat Breaking Free

7

Crouched among the thin, brittle branches, his nose tickling with the sharp smell of lemons, Joe stared in through the dark window watching the housebreaker's stealthy movements. In the inky-black room, he could make out very little even with his superior night vision. But suddenly he was blinded. Light blazed on, right in his eyes. Backing away, nearly falling, his every nerve jumping with shock, he was caught in the brilliance like a deer in a speeder's headlights.

Hunching down, trying to hide his white parts, he had no real cover. Light pooled in through the skinny branches and scruffy leaves. In its glare he couldn't see the intruder's face, the hood was pulled nearly together. Black might be melodramatic, but it was effective. There was a bulge in the intruder's right pocket. A weapon? Skinny guy, even in the oversized black sweatshirt. Opening the dresser drawers, real bold now. What was he looking for? Something in particular, or just any valuables he could find, money, credit cards, jewelry? Or was he putting something in the drawers? He seemed very casual and unhurried.

Either the lock on this back door had been easy to breach, a credit card lock, or the guy was mighty fast with the lock picks. Or Chichi had left it unlocked? Had she forgotten to lock it? Or did this person have a key?

Maybe the new owners hadn't changed the locks, some people just didn't think of those things. Or had Chichi given someone a key? From the front of the house, Joe could still hear dialogue and canned laughter. The way the burglar was bundled in the dark sweatshirt, it was hard to tell whether this was a man or a woman-until suddenly his quarry flipped back the hood, unzipped the sweatshirt, and tossed it on a chair-and Joe gulped back a yowl of surprise.

Chichi. It was Chichi. She smiled lazily, fluffed her frazzled blond hair, and ran her hand down her slim waist, pulling down her tight black T-shirt, showing plenty of cleavage. What was she doing sneaking into her own house under cover of darkness, sliding silently into the darkened room?

And who was out there in the living room watching the tube? Did she have company? Why hadn't he seen someone before? Those two guys who came to see her, neither acted like he was living here. Suspicions formed in Joe's mind faster than he could process them; but they added up to nothing. Zilch.

As Chichi pulled off the tight black jeans and slipped into a red satin robe, he wanted to race around to the front window and have a closer look at that one-person audience. Maybe he could peer under the blind. But he wanted, more, to stay where he was clinging to the skinny branch. He watched her slip a black cloth bag from the pocket of the sweatshirt where it lay on the chair; and she stood looking around the room. It seemed like the kind of waterproof silk bag that expensive raincoats come folded into, for easy travel.

Kneeling, she opened the bottom dresser drawer and reached up underneath, making Joe want to laugh out loud. If she was hiding something, that was the first place a cop-or a burglar-would look.

But then Chichi seemed to realize this, too. She rose, clutching the bag, and stood considering the mattress-another laughable choice. Go ahead, Joe thought, twitching a whisker. The moment you leave, lady, or go to take a shower, I'll be in there slashing through the mattress, and out again with the loot…

But what loot? What did she have in the bag? And could he even get into the place?

Well, hell, he'd never seen a house he couldn't break into.

Kneeling, Chichi slipped the bag between the two mattresses. She didn't shove it very deep, she didn't slit the mattress ticking. Good show, Joe thought, itching to get his paws under there, get his claws into that black silk. For a long moment, she just knelt there. Then, almost as if she'd read his mind, she pulled the bag out again and set it on the bed, as if she meant to hide it somewhere more secure, harder to discover.

But maybe, Joe thought, he wouldn't have to retrieve it. Maybe he'd know what she'd hidden, as soon as he found out what had happened in the village. Chichi's stealthy arrival home while the sirens were still shrieking, plus the unanswered puzzle of who was watching TV, had to add up to trouble.

The thin branch was cutting into his belly, and its thorns had stuck his hind paw so deeply he could smell his own blood. Hurt like hell to back away when, within the bright room, Chichi turned suddenly and approached the window.

She stood looking out, her eyes on a level with his own, which were slitted closed, his white parts hidden in an uncomfortable crouch. Did the bedroom light pick him out like a possum on a leafless branch?

But so what? What difference? So there was a cat in the tree, a neighborhood cat. Clyde Damen's cat, harassing the sleeping birds, maybe snatching baby birds from their nests.

She didn't remain long at the window, but bent down to root around in a suitcase that lay open on a chair beside the dresser. Hadn't she unpacked? She'd been there two weeks. That spoke of a transient, fly-by-night attitude that made Joe smile with satisfaction at his own astute character assessment.

But when she drew from the suitcase a long, sharp-looking bread knife, and looked up directly through the glass, he swallowed back a yelp of surprise and nearly fell out of the tree. Backing away into the tiniest twiggy branches, he lacerated two more paws and bent the limbs so far that he swung and wobbled wildly before he righted himself, nonchalantly licked a paw as if he hadn't seen anything frightening but had just lost his balance, and crept back to a safer perch. Maybe, with the inside light reflecting against the glass, she had only seen her own reflection.

But why the knife? What made her pick it up and peer out so intently?

And what, in the next instant, made her draw the shade?

Maybe she'd heard something, the soft hush of his scrabbling among the brittle branches; maybe that was all. There was no reason for her, even if she'd seen him, to feel threatened. By a cat? Why would she?

Annoyed at his own cowardice, Joe dropped from the lemon tree and sped for the front of the house. Rearing up with his paws on the sill, he peered through beneath the shade, stretching and tilting his head, his nose pressed against the cold glass.

Studying the dim room in the TV's flickering light, Joe laughed softly. Little Chichi had some artistic flair, some talent as a sculptor.

Maybe she had worked in department store window display, or maybe on stage sets. Or maybe she was simply talented. She had created a very lifelike silhouette using a mop and several other common household items.

The mop formed the body; it was one of those old-fashioned mops with twisted rags on a stick; these were the woman's tresses, tangled like Chichi's blond coiffure. The figure wore a blue sweat suit, artfully padded out in just the right places. The head itself was made of wadded and pasted newspapers. A small table lamp behind the figure gave off the weak glow that helped, with the flicker of the TV, to silhouette her against the shade. The creative dummy was, at the moment, being treated to an old rerun of Lassie, a series Joe found particularly disgusting.

It was one thing to see animal stories that were obviously imaginary takeoffs, like Alice in Wonderland, or the Narnia series, or The Lion King. Children knew this was make-believe, and they loved it. It was quite another matter to subject children to animal tales that purported to present impossible animal behavior as real life. The things Lassie understood and did were not at all how dogs really acted or thought, and yet the series wasn't presented as fantasy The result, in Joe's opinion, was generations of children who hadn't a clue how to train and deal with their new Christmas puppies or kittens, and generations of parents who were just as ignorant.

When Joe compared those tawdry stories to the very real and wonderful feats of well-trained police and drug dogs, and of herding and search-and-rescue dogs, Lassie's idiocy came off as dangerously and foolishly misleading. No wonder children grew up knowing nothing about the animals with whom they shared the earth.

Clyde would once have said he was grossly opinionated. But Clyde's views on the subject had undergone some serious changes, and were now pretty much the same as Joe's own. As for Joe and Dulcie and Kit's situation, the cats themselves understood that they were far beyond the pale. That no sensible adult could easily believe that a cat could talk, and for this they were eternally grateful.

Continuing to admire Chichi's display-window handiwork, he wondered if this figure had been here before Clyde went off to dinner. Clyde and Ryan must have walked right by it, passing this window as they headed for Lupe's Playa. Clyde, seeing what he thought was Chichi in there, should have wondered at seeing her so shortly afterward walking into Lupe's.

But maybe not. It was only a few blocks. Or maybe she'd had this figure all set up within the darkened room, had watched through the front window until Clyde and Ryan left the house walking up toward the village, and then had turned on the lamp and TV, and had slipped out of the house to follow them.

But why? To establish an alibi to her whereabouts, tonight? But dinner was a long time before whatever came down in the village. How could her appearance at Lupe's afford her a tight alibi?

Maybe she'd wanted to get friendly with the Molena Point cops, make nice to Harper and Garza. She'd tried hard enough to get herself invited to join them. To gain their goodwill, while at the same time establishing an alibi. Fat chance, with cops. Anyway, that really didn't wash. How would she know Clyde was having dinner with Max and Dallas?

Unless Clyde had told her? Quite possible. She often came knocking; maybe earlier this evening he'd used dinner as an excuse to get rid of her. Or maybe, seeing Ryan arrive and the two of them go off, Chichi took a chance and followed?

Whatever, they'd all left the restaurant long before the sirens started. She'd had plenty of time to take care of whatever business involved the little black bag.

Filled with questions, he considered waiting until her lights went out and she was in bed asleep, then find a way inside; try to wriggle under the mattress without waking her.

Right. And end up backed into a corner by that businesslike bread knife.

But again, he was only a cat. She shouldn't be overly alarmed by his presence; when she saw him in the yard or on his own porch, she looked at him with distaste, but not with fear; she didn't go pale and back away as a real ailurophobe would be likely to do, exhibiting shortness of breath and possible heart palpitations. A person like that, you really couldn't con them with purrs, with face rubs against a stockinged ankle. And long ago, in San Francisco, she'd played up to him big time.

Now, probably the worst Chichi would do if she found him in her room would be fling open the back door and chase him out into the night.

Right. With the bread knife.

Dulcie would say his plan was more than stupid, she'd call him totally insane, say he'd abandoned the last shred of his previously astute feline mind. Maybe he'd wait until tomorrow, take the sensible route, lay low until Chichi walked into the village early, as she often did, carrying her big canvas tote.

Leaving Chichi's front window, scorching up the pine tree to his own roof, he shouldered into his tower and through his cat door, dropped down to Clyde's desk, and went straight to Snowball in the big leather chair.

She was awake, looking small and lonely, just a frightened wisp of white fluff. Charlie had said once that cats, when they were sick or hurt or afraid or grieving, seemed to shrink to half their size, to collapse right in on themselves. Slipping up into the chair beside Snowball, he began to lick her ear and to talk gently to her.

Of the three household cats, Snowball had been the first to get used to his human speech. Her initial shock hadn't lasted long, and then she'd been more fascinated than appalled.

"It's all right, Snowball," he told her now. "Rube will be all right, he's in good hands now, he's not in pain now." But even as he said it, Joe shuddered. What did he mean, he'll be fine? What did that mean, in good hands now? What did that mean, not in pain now?

He didn't want to think what those expressions might really mean.

Giving the grieving little cat a gentle wash, he sat with her snuggled close, waiting until she dozed again, tired out with missing Rube. Only then did Joe leave her. Leaping from desk to rafter and through to the roofs, he headed fast for the center of the village, his gaze focused on the reflection of slow-moving car lights and handheld spotlights that now glanced skyward, bouncing against the edges of the roof gutters and flickering along the undersides of the oaks. Cops with spotlights, moving fast and silent.

He approached the scene expecting any second to hear sirens blast; but none did. Just the silent racing lights and the whisper of voices that, from a distance, only a cat could hear; and then, soon, the muted static of police radios turned low. As he neared the scene he could make out more clearly the soft resonance of the cops' voices, the voices of men he knew. There were no sirens, no staccato sounds of men running, no cars taking off with squealing tires; no more shots fired.

But suddenly just below him four patrol cars took off fast in four directions, racing silent and swift along the narrow streets. Joe knew the sound of the big Chevys that Molena Point PD drove, knew their purr as well as he knew his own. Approaching the scene over the shingles, he paused, waiting and watching, half his mind even now on old Rube, on Clyde and on Snowball.

Clyde would be alarmed when he got home and Snowball wasn't in her bed, when she wasn't anywhere downstairs or in the patio. Eventually he'd look upstairs, where she sometimes went when she was very upset, when the other two household cats took her toys or took all the food. Clyde would find her in the leather chair and would likely take her into bed with him, to comfort her-to comfort each other. Clyde would be feeling low himself, maybe very low, Joe thought forlornly.

Long before the first alarm sounded on the police switchboard, before any call came in to the dispatcher, Max and Charlie Harper had settled in for the evening, replete with their good Mexican dinner. They had made a pot of coffee and brought the two dogs in for a relaxed evening before the fire. Charlie, tired and happy after her pack trip, lay on the rug before the blazing logs, lulled by the fire's crackle, by the faint crashing of the distant surf, and the music from an Ella Fitzgerald CD. The two big dogs lay near her, eyeing her coffee, though they didn't like that bitter brew. Max sat sprawled in one of the two red leather chairs, enjoying the beauty and peace of their home and admiring Charlie's neat butt in her snug jeans.

Above them the ceiling of the great room rose to a high peak that towered over the rest of the house, its cedar rafters perfuming the room. In the daytime the long glass wall offered a wide sweep down across the pastures to the open hills and to the sea beyond and, off to the right, the rooftops and dark oaks of the village. The thin, pleated blinds pulled high and the lamps unlit they enjoyed the night sky. As yet there was no hint of trouble, no faint finger of red touching the sky, no faint, distant sounds of unrest in the small village.

The furnishings of the room were simple, the red leather chairs, the bright primitive colors of the Turkish Konya rug that Charlie had found at an estate sale, the long wicker couch with its fluffy pillows. Opposite the windows, the fireplace wall was faced, floor to ceiling, with round river stones and flanked by tall bookcases. The other two walls of the room were stark white, setting off Charlie's framed drawings of horses, dogs, wild animals, and of the three cats. One wall was broken by a sliding glass door that led to the wide stone terrace; the terrace, in turn, joined the kitchen. Charlie was telling Max about the quarter horse ranch where she and Ryan and Hanni had spent two nights, when Max's cell phone buzzed. "Damn!" she said violently.

"Maybe it's nothing," Max said, flipping the phone open.

The next moment, she could tell by his face that it was the end of their quiet evening. He listened, asked several questions, then rose. Neither said anything. Charlie got up from the floor and kissed him. He hugged her hard, grabbed his jacket and was out the door-gone while she stood there wondering, for the thousandth time, why she had married a cop.

But she knew why.

Pouring another cup of coffee from the pot by the fireplace, she lay down again among the cushions, thinking that she should pull the shades now that she was alone. Thinking she really ought to turn the police scanner on, find out what was happening. But she was far too comfortable to do either. She'd know what was happening soon enough. Rolling over on the rug, snuggling between the two dogs, she said a prayer for Max, as she always did. He would not like knowing that she prayed for him; this was his job. But she prayed anyway. What could it hurt; she couldn't help how she felt, no matter how she tried- and then she began to worry about the three cats.

They'd be right in the middle, you could bet on it, drawn to the crime scene like kids to a fire. Three little cats, so small, three rare little souls, so strangely blessed with human talents, out in the night peering down from the trees or rooftops, keen with predatory enthusiasm for whatever crime was coming down.

Though her prayers might not make anyone safe, and though she would not change the cats any more than she would change Max, Charlie prayed for them all.