Cat Chase The Moon

21

Joe Grey arrived home to a dark house. From the roof, slipping in through a window of his tall glass tower, he waded through his pillows and nudged open his cat door to the inner rafters of the master bedroom. He could hear from just below the comforting rhythm of Clyde’s snoring, and that eased his nerves. It had seemed a bitter night, Courtney being prodded to do tricks that she refused to do, his young calico so distressed that Joe could see tears in her amber eyes; and on his way home it had started to rain, hard little drops piercing his coat and driving into his ears—the whole night seemed to have turned sour. Even the Luther apartment across the street looked grim, dark, and silent. The wet street below was deserted, both Thelma’s and Varney’s cars gone. All the house windows were black except for one tiny, blurred light behind Mindy’s curtain; a sheltered glow as if, left alone, she didn’t want to be noticed from outside. Looked like she had turned on a flashlight beneath her quilt and was reading, pushing away her loneliness.

How long had they left the house empty, Mindy vulnerable to whoever might want to break in, no one to watch over her? He wondered if they had even locked the front door? Did either one of them care what happened to the child? And where the hell were they at this hour?

Into some kind of trouble, you could bet. At least Varney would be. Likely out robbing some poor citizen or knocking around a pair of lovers in a parked car, taking their petty cash and cell phones.

It wouldn’t surprise him if all the scattered robberies that had occurred on the outskirts of the village over the last months were Varney’s doing, or Nevin’s. Maybe even DeWayne, maybe he’d been in town longer than anyone knew. If so, he’d been slick, to evade Harper and his men.

Joe was used to Varney being gone all hours of the night. As for Thelma, she was no better, likely up to the same thefts as the Luther brothers—scattered crimes at the edges of the village that had gone on for months: assaults totally different from the slick and professional daytime thefts right in town: fast, well-planned heists and the thief gone so quickly that no one but the victim knew anything had happened—then suddenly, those snatch-and-grabs had ceased altogether, and that was puzzling.

As he settled among his pillows licking his fur dry and watching Mindy across the way, she sat up sleepily, pushed back her quilt, and peered out through the curtain. The rain had eased. Could she see him watching her? She was staring straight at him. Rain-smeared moonlight shifted across his face, maybe causing his eyes to flash yellow, maybe that had drawn her attention. He turned away and curled down deeper. Was she wishing, all alone, that she could be in his cozy tower with him cuddled close and warm, soothed by his welcoming purrs? Wishing she wasn’t shut up by herself in that dark and empty apartment?

So many souls closed up alone tonight. Mindy. Courtney locked upstairs after her disgraceful performance. Maurita huddled inside Juana’s condo, although at least her guards were friends.

Someday, the way the world seemed to be traveling—more crime, more fear, less joy—would everyone isolate themselves alone? No more friends or groups of friends, no more loving families? Was that what life would be like in the future, a multiplicity of electronic horrors to run what was left; living creatures cast aside, abandoned as afterthoughts? Was that how the world would end?

Well, hell, didn’t that make him feel great! Angry at his own stupid ideas, he pushed deeper into the pillows and turned his mind to how to free his own young captive, how to help Courtney escape, how to spring her without human help.

He and Clyde had argued more than once about that. Clyde wanted to barge in when the store was open, charge up the stairs, bust through the door and grab her—or wait until midnight, break out a showroom window with a sledgehammer and order her straight out of there.

“Sure,” Joe had said, “you can do that, and have the Seavers after you, maybe with a gun. And what if she runs from you, if she doesn’t want to come? They call the cops, you’d be hauled into the station, you’d have Harper, your best friend, in a hell of a mess. The judges . . .”

This had gone on with increasing heat, over several uncomfortable meals and in between, until Ryan put a stop to it, read them both off with amazingly colorful language. She told Clyde that Joe was right, that human interference would put Clyde and the department in trouble, and could get Courtney hurt. She had left the table, Clyde glaring after her as snarly as a mad possum, only Joe Grey hiding a smile.

Now, from under her quilt, Mindy peered out at Joe again. A little earlier, she had watched the gray tomcat come across the rooftops nearly invisible in the rain and moving fast, his white paws, the white strip of nose and chest like pale moths winging above the shingles. The Damens’ cat heading home for his tower.

Slipping back beneath her covers, still she looked out admiring the tomcat, wishing that she, like that free soul, were out in the small hours, free and on her own.

But more than admiring Joe Grey’s freedom, she coveted the tomcat’s tower. She wished that was her elegant little house, she knew she would feel safer there, with Ryan and Clyde present in the room below. Two people and the gray cat whom she was sure cared for her and would love her. She’d like to crawl across to Joe’s roof and in through his window and snuggle up against his soft gray fur. The tower would be plenty big enough for her and Joe if she curled up just right among the pillows. It had glass windows all around, at least one unlocked, she’d seen him go through. Her mother always closed Mindy’s bedroom windows at night even when it was too hot, she said it was dangerous to leave them open, that someone might break in. So why was it all right to leave her alone and leave the downstairs windows and doors unlocked?

She watched Joe Grey turn over yawning. She got out of bed and looked up and down the street below. Empty, no cars. She pulled on a dark sweater over her pajamas and put on her slippers. She unlocked and opened her window, unlatched the screen and stepped out onto the wet roof.

The big pine tree that she remembered being there when she was younger was gone now, it had blown down in the last storm. She could easily have gotten across on its heavy branches. Instead, she headed for a smaller and spindly pine down at the end of her house near the Damens’ driveway.

Its branches swayed unsteadily when she put her weight on them. She worked slowly across toward their living room, swinging like a monkey from branch to branch, getting soaked and soon full of scratches. She clung finally to their living room roof, scrambling precariously until she was safely on top of it. There she crawled along the wet shingles to Joe Grey’s tower and looked in at him asleep, his paws limp over his belly, his eyes closed. She eased a window open and slipped in, closed it, and curled down around the tomcat among the pillows. Joe Grey didn’t move. She smiled, getting him damp again after he’d dried himself, but also getting herself warm against his thick fur. She was almost asleep when suddenly his yellow eyes were open looking directly into hers. A knowing look that told her he’d been aware of her all along.

She stared back uncertainly. Was he angry at her coming in here, was he about to scratch her? But Joe Grey wouldn’t do that. Was that piercing look only a sly smile? Did cats smile? When he didn’t seem disturbed at her presence she pressed closer against him. He eased closer, too, and began to purr, and Mindy felt safe and peaceful. Even if she was hogging his space, he was kind and caring and there was goodness in the world. Here was someone, here was a whole family, cat and humans, that she could trust and love, with whom she was safe. She drifted off, secure and warm.

She didn’t know how long she slept; seemed like hours but it was still dark when lights woke her and woke Joe Grey. He sat up and slipped out of the tower to the edge of the roof as car lights came along the street, two sets of lights, one from either direction. Thelma’s car, and Varney’s.

They pulled up next to each other in the middle of the street, their engines idling, the drivers sitting face-to-face where they could speak softly through their open windows:

Varney handed his sister-in-law a package, which Thelma shoved deep in her jacket pocket. They talked for a minute, mumbling so softly that neither Joe nor Mindy could understand much; Joe thought they were talking about money. It sounded like hundreds of thousands, like something you’d hear in a movie or on the news.

Thelma said, “Of course I know the combination. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, he’s there, I called him.” They closed their windows and Thelma headed away into the center of the village. Varney parked in his usual place in front of the apartment, Mindy watched him get out and go in the front door. She waited, looking across, but no lights came on in the living room or kitchen. In a moment the light in Varney’s room shone. He hadn’t bothered to stop and check on her, hadn’t had time to see if she was all right after being left alone, to maybe pull up her covers and tuck her in, the tender things that Grandpa or Grandma had done. What if he had gone in her room and found her gone? Would he even care? She was glad to be out of there, to not be alone in the house with Varney.

When she turned to look at Joe Grey he was wide awake, alert and poised for flight, watching where Thelma’s taillights vanished around the corner turning left—and suddenly he fled away over the slick rooftops, following her.

Why would a cat care where Thelma was going? Mindy herself didn’t care. All she cared about was getting Grandpa home from the hospital. Until then she wouldn’t think about her mother’s nighttime prowling, she’d think only about Grandpa.

Earlier in the evening, after Dulcie and Joe and Kit had left the Seavers’ roof, and golden Pan curled up outside the Seavers’ upstairs window intending to watch Courtney for the rest of the night, a fitful rain blew then eased. He pushed closer under the window’s ledge. Tired and hungry and cold, trying to keep dry against the plaster wall, the orange tomcat did indeed fall asleep, didn’t hear the phone ring, didn’t see Courtney wake and rise—the phone had startled her from her warm spot on the couch. She felt grouchy anyway from being shut upstairs all night—retribution for her stubborn response to Fay’s lessons. She listened to the second ring and to Ulrich’s low, gruff answer; she heard him get out of bed.

She rose and shook herself and changed position to make sure she was awake, that this wasn’t another dream. Ulrich said something she couldn’t understand, she heard him moving around then the bedroom door opened and he headed, in his robe, through the living room straight for the door to the stairs. He looked over at her where she’d curled up again, her eyes closed as if asleep. Did he expect her to wake up and watch him, expect her to know or care what he was doing?

Maybe, she thought, if she had done the tricks tonight, if she had made the Seavers proud of her cleverness, if she showed them how she really could perform, it might be easier to escape; they would be more loving again and less bossy. Maybe if she were more obedient she’d earn more freedom, maybe find a careless moment when she could pull off a fast vanishing act.

Yes, and maybe not.

Ulrich, turning the upper knob for the bolt, then the doorknob below it, glanced over at her then eased the door open and shut it quickly behind him. For an instant she considered darting through between his feet and leaping to freedom, but she thought better of that. She looked at the door with interest. He hadn’t locked it behind him, there was just the knob to deal with.

Slipping from the couch, she listened through the door as his slippers padded down the stairs, the back door opened, and he scuffed across the storeroom toward the outer door to the alley. Trotting into the kitchen, she put her ear to the floor just above where he had stopped. The outside door opened and there were low voices.

She approached the door again, at the head of the stairs. Leaping, she swung on the knob. She worked at it with all her might, swinging, swinging harder. She felt the knob turn, she was almost out when she caught her pad on a screw and blood ran down, soon making her paws so slippery that the knob wouldn’t turn at all. Leaping to the kitchen sink, she took the dishcloth in her teeth.

After what seemed hours, swinging with the cloth wrapped around the knob, pushing with her hind feet against the molding, she was able to turn the knob far enough so she could force the door open. She wiped blood from her paws on the cloth, slipped through, pulled the door softly closed behind her, and hurried down the stairs where she stuffed the cloth under an Egyptian dresser. She paused, listening.

Two voices coming from the storeroom, Ulrich and a woman. Was that Thelma Luther? The inner door stood half open. Peering through, she saw the door to the alley open, too. Thelma’s car stood there. Ulrich must be certain that his “little cat” couldn’t get out the upstairs door, that she wouldn’t know how to open the knob. In the workroom itself, the big door to the safe hung open. Now! She thought. Do it now!

She crawled beneath a carved armoire, deciding. She’d have only a second—could she pull this off? Joe Grey had told and told her, it was time to get out. She could imagine her daddy’s voice echoing, “Get the hell out,Courtney! Now! Do it now! What are you, a sissy little housecat? Do it now! Right now!”

Ulrich and Thelma had removed the safe’s contents, they were laying out thick envelopes and packets on the worktable. Thelma was removing packs of money from each, counting it on a little hand computer, recording it in a ledger and putting it back in the envelope. At first Courtney hardly knew Thelma, she was dressed like a man, dark jeans, black shirt, heavy-shouldered black jacket, her hair tucked under a black knitted cap pulled low in front, even a man’s thick shoes. She had removed her thin black gloves to be able to count the cash. Adding up each packet, she wrote the total on a list with a name written at the top, and put the envelope back in the safe. When they were turned away Courtney crept closer, under a buffet carved in gold and red. A cloth lay beneath, a dust cloth that Bert must have dropped. Using one front paw, then the other, she managed to drape it over her back and shoulders, covering her bright colors, all but a few smears of blood on her paws.

With the two thus occupied jotting down numbers she ducked her head, tucked her tail under her belly, and crept behind their backs through the workroom like a pale ghost; there she eased among some packing boxes into a draft of cold air coming from the open door—but just as she started to dart out, a small noise from above, a creak in the upstairs floor, made Thelma glance around the storeroom then look up at the top of the stairs. But that door was shut tight. Maybe Fay had gotten up for a moment.

“No worries,” Ulrich said. “It’s just the cat.” He laughed. “It can’t get out, no cat would think to turn a doorknob, not when she couldn’t even jump through a hoop last night.” Then in low voices, they began arguing.

In that instant the dust rag flew behind the two of them like a gray ghost and Courtney was gone into the alley. The two thieves were after her as she headed for the street, racing through the shadows into the bushes, losing her dusty cloth on thorns and tangles, panting at the sound of their pounding footsteps. She didn’t hear Joe Grey bolting over the rooftops, she didn’t hear Pan leap from his cold nest against the apartment wall and race to join him, she only ran.