Cat Chase The Moon

10

Late that evening, with the store’s lights dimmed and the big glass doors securely locked, Joe, Dulcie, Pan, and Kit waited, hidden under the antique furniture, for the upstairs door to open. When at last it did open and Courtney came out, she paused on the top step, looking up at Seaver. He smiled and leaned down and petted her and handed her a little treat. “Go on, my dear, the antiques store is yours now. Have a good time. It’s a lovely place for you to roam, to get used to the finer furnishings among which you will be living. I’m sure you won’t scratch anything, I know you’ll be a good girl.”

His words made Courtney want to throw up. She glanced up at him innocently, as sweetly as she could manage, and raced down the steps. Moving out of his sight, she leaped to the top of a small, hand-carved writing desk that stood against the inner wall. The subtly lit display windows formed a background to the rich brocades, golden pitchers, gilded chairs all artfully arranged. She sat looking out among the shadows. She listened to the upstairs door close. Slowly, in the whisper of light from the windows, the shadows began to take shape, to morph into vague forms that only a cat could see. She sat watching until at last a cat slipped out, then another, each watching the door above in case it might open again.

Dulcie appeared from under a settee, Kit and Pan from behind a china cabinet. Then Joe Grey from an elegantly arranged tangle of gold satin draped over a chair. As he reared up, the tomcat’s silver-gray coat glowed against the gold like another piece of rare artwork.

Courtney sat tall on the desk before them, between a 1900 silver centaur priced at eight thousand dollars, and a seventeenth-century stone lion at twenty thousand, each price on a little card slipped beneath the object. Joe Grey, looking up at her, knew she was the most beautiful of the three. When finally she leaped down she led them winding through the store and into the little powder room with its gilt mirror, lace-edged curtains, and hand-painted tile.

The window had bars behind the ruffles. The spaces between the outside, decorative iron grill were too small for a human but plenty big for a cat. Joe Grey returned to the showroom and dragged an antique wicker stool into the powder room, pushing it beneath the closed window.

Earlier, before the store closed, before they had sneaked in, the four cats had inspected from outside the little window with its fancy barrier—and with a row of heavy wooden shipping crates, marked with Seaver’s address, lined up against the outside wall. Crates set up on heavy timbers and covered with plastic to keep them dry, containers used presumably for antiques coming into the store, and for sending sold treasures out again.

Joe Grey had, standing on the tallest crate and using his claws, already loosened two of the flimsy turn-screws of the window screen. Now, with little effort, one could ease out one corner of the screen. With a good swipe of determined claws, one could bring down the whole thing if he chose.

Now, inside the powder room standing on the wicker stool, Joe and Pan tackled the wide metal window latch with their paws—white paw, red tabby, white paw, red overlapping, pressing as hard as they could while the three girl cats held the stool steady.

The latch barely moved. Straining, they pressed harder. They changed positions so they could pull. Pulling and pressing, wiggling it back and forth, they began to loosen it.

The latch gave all at once. Whack. The window slid open right in their faces.

With that half of the window open, Joe Grey leaned out through the bars and pushed one corner of the screen loose. They slid through and were out of there in a tumble . . .

All but Courtney.

Balanced on the sill ready to leap out, she paused and looked back. She stepped back inside onto the decorative tile counter, stood looking out at the four cats below her, at three tails lashing, and one very angry tomcat, his short tail down, his ears flat, his yellow eyes blazing up at her. “Get the hell out of there!”

“I’m not going. I’m staying. Just for a little while. I’ll slide the window almost shut so I can get out again later.”

“What the hell do you mean, staying? What do you mean, later? You can’t stay. Why do you think we went to all this trouble! Get the hell down from there, get out here NOW, Courtney. Out here with us NOW! Do it NOW.”

She looked through the bars at her daddy, both cats’ ears back, Joe’s scowl so fierce he frightened her, and her own amber eyes flashed defiantly. “I will stay here for now. I want to know if that woman is his wife, that woman lying in the hospital all beaten up. I want to know if that’s where his wife went, I want to know if it was Seaver who nearly buried her alive. I mean to stay until I find out.”

“If she’s Seaver’s wife, the cops would have a make on her prints,” Joe said. “They’d know who she is. The guys at the department would know her, would have seen her around. I don’t even know if he has a wife.”

“What if she’s his girlfriend?” Courtney said. “A . . . what do you call it? A pickup. Maybe someone with false identities, the way criminals do, the way you told me about? So Seaver knew the cops wouldn’t find anything.”

Joe Grey sighed. Sometimes he wished he’d keep his big mouth shut. Besides her faulty logic, and an imagination Courtney must have picked up from Kit, what kind of child had he raised? “Come out from there, Courtney. Come out NOW . . .” But then they all heard it, the upstairs door open, footsteps coming down. Courtney slid the window nearly closed and beat it into the shadows under a couch just as Seaver’s dark silhouette appeared.

He came down, sat down at his desk, switched on the light, and picked up a ledger. The cats had fled through the powder room window, making not the slightest sound. But Joe Grey turned and was slipping back to remain watching when the phone rang. Seaver picked up.

Joe eased up onto the crate, lying just beneath the window with his ear to the crack. “Yes?” Seaver said, then was silent for a long moment, then began tapping his pencil on the blotter. “That won’t work, you ninny. She’s not . . .” Another wait, then he laughed. “You are kidding? Everyone in town knows her. That red hair . . . What do you think would happen? She’s the chief of police’s wife, you dummy. You don’t need a shill, a ‘lady companion,’ to make your rounds of the store. Do an appraisal as best you can without expert advice, just get on with it then drift away into the crowds.”

Silence, then, “Well, of course she was better. That can’t be helped now.”

Another, longer pause, then . . . “Oh, right. Just an afternoon of shopping to help out a neighbor. So your father is her neighbor. Has she ever met you? She and Harper have only been married a few years, she was straight down from San Francisco, she didn’t know anyone but her aunt. No. I don’t want any part of that and neither do you. You try that, any of you try it, and we’re done, I’m out of it. The cops’ve likely seen you going in or out my back door. If you get in trouble, we’re all in the muck. Just go on the way you were.”

There was a tiny click from the other end. Seaver stared at the phone, and banged down the receiver. He sat a minute, swearing softly, then put the ledger in a drawer as if bored with his bookwork, turned off the light, and went back upstairs. Courtney watched him, sleepy and innocent, from a brocade couch.

Outside, the minute Seaver was gone, Joe Grey was off the crates and catching up with the other three where they waited in the alley behind the store—but suddenly Dulcie wasn’t with them. She flew past Joe, leaped to the crate, eased the window open and she was inside. Inside with Courtney, with her child. Joe Grey didn’t stop her, she had that intent mothering look when it was best to leave her alone. What did she have in mind? Was she going to babysit all night? She was as stubborn as her kitten, as stubborn as Joe himself—but he did feel better with Dulcie on guard. He stood in the weeds looking up at the sky; the fog had cleared, the moon was bright. A perfect night to hunt. But they had better things to do. He and Kit and Pan, crouched in the alley, laid out their plan; then Kit slipped back to hiss through the window, to tell Courtney and Dulcie what they meant to do—and hoping Courtney wouldn’t go all stubborn again.

When Kit returned to the alley, each cat headed home to tell their respective housemates that they’d found Courtney—though they were all three still angry at the young calico’s hardheadedness. They would go to Wilma to tell her the news, and to Kit and Pan’s old couple, and to Ryan and Clyde.

As they parted, Pan said, “Courtney will be all right. He’s treated her well this far, he hasn’t hurt her. If he thinks he can make money off her, why would he harm her? And, if he does get mean, she’s safer with one of us here each night, to fight and to go for the phone.”

Their plan seemed simple enough. Each cat’s housemate would alert their few human friends who knew the cats could speak, would tell them they’d found Courtney, tell them the cats’ routines and where she was, but they would tell no one else. They would leave the posters up, pretend to still be looking for her; they would not alert even the other members of CatFriends who did not know the cats could talk.

If they took down the posters, if everyone in the village knew she’d been found, Seaver would begin to watch for what kind of trick she was up to. And when she did escape, after the trouble he’d gone to to find and catch her the first time, during a second hunt she might not be safe anywhere.

Each evening before the store closed, one of the cats, taking turns, would slip inside. Would watch the young clerk leave, watch Seaver lock the glass doors securing his valuable wares. They would watch Seaver go back upstairs, watch him let Courtney out of his apartment, watch her race down—and once the clerk left, the rest of the night would be theirs.

If the chosen cat couldn’t slip in through the open front doors unseen, he or she would wait until pale, thin Bert had locked up, scuffling footsteps, heavy coat pulled tight around him as he headed home. When all was quiet, the chosen guard, eyes aglow and tail switching, would crawl in through the powder room window between the bars, under the loose screen and through the barely open glass, to spend the softly lit night with Courtney among gold-decorated and priceless antiques. With a phone on the desk and one in the back room, if something happened they could call the Damens or Wilma or the cops—why would he hurt her if he wanted to make a show cat of her?

But still, Joe was all atremble. The time would come, he knew, when the next step in Seaver’s plan would take shape, a plan that might carry Seaver’s calico prize miles away, first to the gallery in the city and then clear across the country, and how would they find her, then?