Cat Chase The Moon

27

Zeb Luther was home from the hospital by mid-afternoon—if you could call that fusty apartment home. Hospitals were so damn slow, with all their paperwork. Riding in the backseat of Thelma’s Volvo with Mindy beside him, he had his walker folded in the trunk; not that he intended to use it. “I’m not crippled. Ain’t no broken leg, no need for that contraption.”

Joe Grey sat across the street in his tower watching Mindy help the old man to the curb and Thelma wrestle out the walker as if it weighed a ton; he watched Zebulon manage the four front steps just fine without any hospital equipment, leaving the walker propped against the rail.

Thelma scowled at Mindy. “You can get him some lunch or an early supper. Both of you better eat, there’s peanut butter and jelly, and milk if it hasn’t gone sour. Then Grandpa might want to lie down.”

“I had peanut butter and jelly in the hospital until it’s running out my ears. And why would I want to lay down, I’ve been in that damned bed for three days. Mindy and I will take a walk.”

Thelma made a rude comment and left the house saying something about groceries.

Thus the neighborhood disturbances began again, bursting forth from within, quite audible at all hours as Grandpa argued that he was going home—to his own home—as Thelma and Varney shouted at him, and as neighbors walked the street staring in, then began calling the station; as the dispatcher sent out an officer on a domestic that ended in nothing but a warning. Zebulon was so loud, and Varney’s language so vile that, after the second domestic call, the responding officer threatened to take them in. Thelma managed to talk him out of it because Grandpa was just home from the hospital and how could she take care of him in jail?

Officer Wrigley frowned. “One more complaint, Grandpa goes back to the hospital and the rest of you to jail.”

“Not my little girl,” Thelma howled. “You can’t put . . .”

“She goes to Children’s Services,” Wrigley said. As he left, Thelma swore and slammed the door behind him. When she headed for her bedroom, Varney came down the hall wearing wrinkled jeans and an old jacket and stomped out of the house; who knew where he went? Joe didn’t hear his car start.

Mindy and Zeb didn’t hear it, either, but they heard Varney go out the front door. He did that sometimes, left his car at home. Mindy looked out the window, saw him walking away, up the hill toward the freeway.

When the house was quiet, when they knew Varney was gone, and thought that Thelma slept, Grandpa and Mindy, alone in Mindy’s room, packed a few necessities in a small duffel and hid it under his bed. They went up the hall to the kitchen and as Zeb listened for Thelma, Mindy hastily packed some food in two grocery bags. She made some canned-ham sandwiches, taking two back to her room for their supper. They went to bed fully dressed. Whether or not they slept, Joe Grey himself dozed off.

Around midnight, Mindy put her ear to Thelma’s door making sure her mother still slept; she slipped into the room as silent as a mouse and lifted Thelma’s car keys from the dresser. Zebulon fetched the grocery bags from the kitchen broom closet and they fled the house.

The sound of a car starting woke Joe, he rose up among the pillows to see Thelma’s parking lights on, and Zeb at the wheel. He watched Mindy hop in with an armload of blankets. The two grocery bags were already on the backseat, with the duffel, and Joe Grey smiled. Zeb Luther was having his way, he and Mindy were going home.Oh, wouldn’t Thelma pitch a fit!

The rain was gone but the clouds still hung thick covering the moon, the night so black he could hardly see where street and parked cars met. Only up the block past a few dark cottages and shops did faint lights shine where the shopping plaza stretched away behind his own house: softly illuminated courtyard, subtly lit first-floor display windows. And on the dark street, only the trail of Zebulon’s taillights headed toward the freeway. His dashboard lights were off, and he must be driving with only his parking lights. He’d be lucky not to crash into a parked car before he reached traffic and had to turn the headlamps higher. The village was so still, the only movement Joe could see was Thelma’s “borrowed” car creeping along . . .

But when he looked again he saw movement at the front of the plaza, faint lights moving inside Saks’s elegant second floor.

Leaving his warm cushions, Joe leaped up onto the top of his tower. From that height, perched on its slanted shingles, he could easily see past the roof of his own house. Yes, faint lights moving deep within Saks’s second-floor display windows, the faintest of soft blue lights. Deeper in, black shadows moved behind the fashionably posed models. And in front of Saks, on Ocean Avenue, three old gray cars were parked half on the sidewalk with their backs to Saks’s front door. Tonight was the night.

Dropping down from the top of his tower, Joe galloped across the bedroom roof and dropped to the kitchen roof; he jumped down to the barbecue counter and around the patio wall that Ryan had designed and built. Here he made a long leap to the top of the higher wall that separated the back of their property, and the entire residential block, from the plaza.

From that wall he could see behind the plaza buildings to the wide strip where buses and trucks could pull off the side street and park during the day. Four tour buses were parked there now, effectively concealing the back of Saks from the street, their occupants most likely tucked in for the night at the several motels that stood among the trees and village shops. Between the buses and Saks, two large black limos had been squeezed in close to the store’s delivery doors, their lights out, nearly invisible in the blackness. Was this a new twist, DeWayne had split up the cars and the retreat routes? Maybe thinking that Maurita had told the department how he usually operated: all out at once, through one door, loaded down with their loot, gone before the cops had a clue?

Now, there was not a cop in sight, in front or in back of Saks. Not a squad car, not a single foot patrol that Joe could see standing in the shadows. He was about to spin around and head home to the phone when, through the upstairs store windows, lights flashed and the shadows moved fast in one direction, converging at the back, hauling cumbersome bags. They disappeared downward as if on service stairs. Where the hell were the cops? The men came out the back of the building, piled their black plastic bags into the limos, swung in themselves and were gone, turning left to Ocean Avenue then right, heading up the hill for the freeway. He heard the cars in front start up and follow them, those figures so stealthy he hadn’t seen them. And still not a cop anywhere. He watched the line of cars turn south onto the freeway, and Joe Grey sped for home.

Bursting into the kitchen through Rock’s dog door and leaping to the counter, he had knocked off the phone’s speaker, forgetting that this call would be ID’d, when up on the freeway he heard tires squeal and sirens scream. He pushed the phone back in place, realizing only then how close the snitch had come to getting caught.

Just ahead of the mixed entourage of crooks, Zeb and Mindy, still driving slowly, saw the pack of cars bearing down behind them. They saw and heard the scream of squad cars, saw their lights flashing, coming fast, and they made a sharp skid onto the right shoulder; they were almost scraped over by the speeding limos. Zeb pulled over farther onto an embankment, tilting the Volvo nearly beyond recovery.

“Get out, Mindy, before we go over.”

“You get out,” she said, grabbing her cell phone and opening her door, watching Zebulon slide out to safety; and they both scrambled down the ditch.

“No point to call 911, the cops are here.” Zeb smiled when he caught a glimpse of white hair among the escaping limos. When the chase had passed, they climbed the bank again and walked along the highway, then sat with their backs against a tree, watching. It was there that Joe Grey found them.

Ahead, the limos and gray cars had slammed on their brakes, skidding and sliding into each other as cop cars circled them, cops appearing out of nowhere hazing them together like sharks closing in on their prey. Gray cars, black limos, black-and-white patrol cars all in a tangle, cops with short-barrel shotguns stepping out, ordering drivers out of their cars and facedown on the ground. A shot was fired, and another. And Zebulon ran, back along the berm. He piled into his car and took off rocking along the berm until he was steady again, turning his lights high, reaching over to open the passenger door as Mindy and Joe Grey jumped in. Praying for the first time since Nell died, Zeb fled along the highway as a shot blasted too close to their back window. So far, the cops had paid no attention to them. He floorboarded the car up the road half a mile past the Harper ranch, he was sweating; he swerved into his own turnoff and it was then he realized there was a cat in the car, sitting calmly on Mindy’s lap.

She said, “You saw him when he found us, back there on the berm. You saw him jump in the car, Grandpa.” Zeb glanced at the cat and at Mindy, and said nothing. They heard the distant scream of sirens as CHP officers joined MPPD, speeding down the freeway from the north, these blending with the howl of medics’ units from the village. Zeb skidded up his own drive, around the outside of the fenced house and pasture, and straight for the woods.

“The horses . . .” He spun around in the seat, looking. “Where are the horses?”

“At the Harpers’. I told you.”

“Oh, yes, that was nice of them. Of course I remember.” But in truth, he hadn’t, no more than he’d remembered the cat. Since DeWayne beat on him, things had seemed to get a little mixed up. He turned onto the narrow path through the woods, scraping the top of Thelma’s car against the hanging branches. A quarter mile, and he parked behind the Harpers’ barn, out of sight from the highway. They didn’t need Thelma or Varney coming after them.

Where was Varney? Had he joined DeWayne and his pack of thieves? Zeb had looked for him down on the highway, but in that mess of course he hadn’t seen him.

They got out of the car and headed around the Harpers’ barn and down the long drive. At the gate, halfway to the highway, Charlie Harper and their young hand, Billy, were standing watch in case one of those guys got loose, in case there was a chase. Both of them had shotguns. That much vigilance might seem amusing to Mindy, but Zeb and Joe Grey knew better—and it was Joe Grey, rearing up beside Charlie, looking down at the confusion of cars and cops, of medics and injured men, who saw DeWayne Luther, his white hair catching car lights where he lay on a stretcher, the coroner leaning over him. DeWayne lying death still beside the hearse, pale face caught in a squad car’s headlights. Zeb let out a gasp, and turned away.

But what turned Joe Grey’s stomach was not this dead man, but two police officers on stretchers, new young men that Joe hardly knew. They were being worked on by medics: tourniquets, oxygen tanks, emergency wrappings. Both were already secured in an ambulance, ready to head for the hospital. To see a cop who had been shot upset Joe so badly that he threw up, retching, in the tall grass.

Charlie handed Billy her shotgun, picked Joe up, wiped his mouth with a tissue and kissed him on top of his head, her red hair falling over his eyes. She gave him a gentle hug, put him down again, and reached to Billy for her weapon. They watched the coroner start to wrap DeWayne in a body bag. Zebulon stood looking with no expression on his face. Looking at his oldest son, dead. His son who had beaten him so badly and who had tried to kill that woman he ran with. Zeb opened the gate and started down toward the hearse, down the rest of the long drive, Charlie and Billy walking beside him gently supporting him. Mindy followed, her own face white, as Max Harper started up the drive to them. Down by the hearse the coroner had stopped working, he stood looking up to Max for a sign to proceed or to back off.

Max paused, looking up at Zeb. “Do you want to come down?”

Zeb was silent. He looked at Max for a long time, then shook his head. “After all these years, he deserved what he got. Now, I don’t need to see him chewed up with bullets.” He turned away in the direction of the barn. But then he paused, turned back, took a key from his pocket and handed it to Max.

“Thelma’s Volvo. It’s behind the hay barn, we borrowed it. Shall I take it back?”

“She won’t need it, she’ll be in jail with the rest of them, at least for a while.” Max accepted the key. “We’ll see that it’s impounded.” He looked down at Mindy. “You were headed home, to Zeb’s place?”

She and Zeb nodded.

“Children’s Services gets a whiff of that, you two alone there, and Zeb just out of the hospital, they won’t like it. Thelma may try for dismissal or maybe home confinement on the excuse that she needs to take care of you.”

Mindy looked stricken.

“Do you have anyone?” Max said. “Someone, maybe a relative who can live in, to get the welfare people off your back?”

“We don’t need . . .” Mindy began.

Charlie shook back her red hair, and looked a question at Max. He nodded. She said, “You can stay here, until you find someone.”

Max said, “Varney will be locked up, too. There’ll be no one in that apartment, welfare would be all over you. But if you could be in your own place . . . what about your daughter-in-law?”

Zeb frowned. “You said Thelma was going to jail.”

“Your other daughter-in-law,” Max said. “Maurita told me DeWayne demanded they get married, several years ago. A mark of ownership, she told me bitterly. To keep his partners off her.”

Even Joe Grey didn’t know that. He was so surprised he reared up in the bushes, startling Max. When the chief looked at him, the tomcat could almost read what he was thinking: How did that damn cat get up here in the middle of another crime scene? Why did he rear up just now? Why the hell does he always . . . ?

Charlie said, “The Damens live right behind the plaza, that could certainly explain his presence: the cat hears sounds, car doors closing. He jumped on the wall and saw the limos take off, saw them hit the freeway. He heard the crash and sirens and, with that cat’s annoying curiosity, he raced along the highway, to have a look.”

She looked back at Mindy and Zeb. “I think you two should stay with us until Children’s Services stops nosing around. And,” she said, looking at Max, “do you think Zeb should meet the daughter-in-law he’s never known? That Zeb and Mindy and I should take a run up to . . . where Maurita is staying?”

Max scowled at her. “It’s the middle of the night, Charlie.”

“While we’re gone, Billy can make up their beds.”

Billy nodded, and grinned at Mindy. “And set out some pie and milk?”

The chief gave Charlie that sly, sideways look. “So just why are you going up to see Maurita, at midnight?”

“Someone has to tell her about DeWayne. And you have your hands full. Don’t you think she’ll want to know that DeWayne is no longer a threat? That she’s free, that she doesn’t have to fear him anymore? And that his crew, with this burglary and their long records, will be on their way to prison where they can’t get at her?”

Max considered her with a steady half frown. “You know that’s my job, Charlie. To inform the wife of the deceased.”

“This one time, Max? It’ll be hours before you can tear yourself away from this mess, with officers all over Saks taking pictures, gathering evidence, lifting prints, and with two cops in the hospital. You’ll be up all night.”

They could see, even from the distance where they stood, that all the interior lights in Saks burned brightly, shining out over the village as MPPD went about its work. “Don’t you think, this once . . . ?” Charlie said. “Don’t you think she’ll be anxious?”

“How would she know this was coming down?”

“You all guessed it would be tonight, or soon. When McFarland and Crowley took her to Kate’s, while DeWayne was still hunting for her, and they saw the gray cars all lined up as if DeWayne was ready to pull a job, and Crowley texted you . . .” Charlie shrugged. “Or maybe she heard it on the police radio,” she said noncommittally.

Joe Grey moved away, smiling. Harper’s favorite snitch hadn’t made the call on this one. But, except for their two young cops getting shot, it was turning out all right. So far.He wanted to ask Max how bad the officers were hurt, but there was no way he could do that.