Cat Coming Home

17

SUCH A STRONG hunch drove Joe as he raced for the Collettos’ garage. Maybe his idea was off the wall, but who was to say he wouldn’t find the old truck in there, the rusted truck that had nearly hit Maudie? The scenario was such a nice fit: angry Kent Colletto—angry at the whole world, it seemed—with access to any number of old vehicles that might later be painted and sold and never found. Those small car lots up the coast, tucked in among the fishing wharfs, had some really decrepit wrecks. He’d often gone with Clyde to look at some rusty “collector’s” treasure, a relic that Clyde would end up towing home, give it a pristine restoration, and quadruple its value. Only as he crouched to leap to the windowsill of the closed garage did Dulcie’s incredulous look stop him. “You don’t really think …” she began.

“It’s worth a shot,” Joe said impatiently.

“No way,” Dulcie said. “What could Maudie have possibly done to make even skuzzy Kent Colletto want to frighten her that way? A joke, a sick joke? I don’t think so.”

But, convinced he was right, he leaped and peered in, getting cobwebs in his whiskers.

Nothing. No truck. Only Jared’s shiny blue T-Bird, and a tan Ford sedan that was probably the family car. Dropping down, he looked at Dulcie, embarrassed. He’d been so sure, such a strong feeling. But she only grinned at him. “Good try,” she said, giving him a whisker kiss. And soon the three cats parted, Joe and Dulcie each heading home to their own supper, Kit dawdling along behind, puzzled perhaps by some faint scent, looking back over her shoulder.

Joe’s thoughts, as he raced over the rooftops, remained on Kent Colletto. The night was balmy around him, the soft breeze heavy with the smell of the sea; as he neared home, the breeze picked up the heady aroma of spaghetti coming from his own house, making him forget Kent Colletto and race faster, urgently licking his whiskers.

From his own roof, Joe looked down at the drive, surprised to see it crowded with cars. Clyde’s yellow roadster and Ryan’s red Chevy pickup stood in the carport; Dallas Garza’s tan Blazer and Charlie Harper’s red Blazer parked behind them; and on the street, Wilma Getz’s car parked behind a squad car. Was something wrong? He remembered no talk of everyone getting together for supper. Given the longer shifts the department had been working, there’d been little time for their usual impromptu gatherings.

But emergencies didn’t call for spaghetti; and as he hurried up the front steps and through his cat door, he heard only relaxed voices and easy laughter. Trotting through the living room to the big kitchen, he found them all at the table, Max and Charlie, Dallas Garza, Charlie’s Aunt Wilma, Ryan and Clyde, and Officers McFarland and Blake, both in uniform. The table wasn’t laden with spaghetti and French bread as he’d expected; supper was over, though the spaghetti pot still sat on the stove. The table was cluttered with poker chips, cards, loose change, and dollar bills. He guessed this was just an impromptu supper, Max and Dallas on call, and maybe Officers McFarland and Blake just getting off their extended shifts. He paused in the door to the kitchen listening to the familiar mix of disjointed remarks, aggressive bets, requests for cards, and a few good-natured put-downs; then he padded on in. No one seemed to notice him. In the far corner, the big silver Weimaraner was curled up fast asleep in the flowered easy chair, the little white cat asleep between Rock’s front legs, one white paw draped over Rock’s shoulder. Turning, Joe fixed his gaze on Ryan.

When she ignored him, her eyes on her cards, he gave a strident mew. Across the table, Dallas watched her, waiting to see whether she would see his raise or fold, his solemn Latino face never changing expression. Wilma Getz folded, laid down her cards, and sat with an amused expression watching Joe as he tried to get Ryan’s attention. Wilma wore a red sweatshirt over a white turtleneck, her long gray-white hair done up in a knot at the nape of her neck. She grinned at Joe as he leaped to the kitchen counter, but then she gave him a questioning look—clearly asking where Dulcie was.

Joe blinked and washed his paws and tried to look at ease, to convey to her that Dulcie had gone on home. He knew Wilma would have left a hearty snack for Dulcie, as she always did. He guessed Kit had headed home, too, where, no matter the hour, her two humans would fix a hot supper for her. Lucinda and Pedric would probably by now be doing up the supper dishes or sitting before the fire reading to each other, the tall, thin octogenarians pleasantly tired after a day’s ramble up in the hills or along the coast. Still watching Ryan, Joe shifted from paw to paw. Couldn’t she see he was starving?

“Raise two,” Ryan said, “and two cards.” When still she paid no attention, Joe gave her a series of bloodcurdling yowls that made young McFarland jump and then laugh, made both Max and Dallas scowl at him. Ryan paid no attention. Crowley said, “Ryan, feed your cat. I’ve won this hand anyway.”

Joe stared at Ryan until she won the pot and raked in her money; then at long last she rose. “Deal me out,” she said, turning away from the table, fixing her gaze on the tomcat. “You needn’t be so bossy.”

Unable to reply, he could only glower. Moving to the stove, she dished up a serving of spaghetti and slipped it in the microwave for a few seconds. Setting the warmed plate on the counter before him, she scratched his ear, winked at him, then turned away, returning to the table. Joe was still slurping spaghetti when Charlie raked in the next pot.

“That makes me feel better,” Charlie said. “If you’re still stewing about Nancyanne Prewitt,” Max said, “forget it. Don’t pay any attention to that stuff.” “I can’t help it. I’m surprised anyone reads the Gazette anymore. It isn’t fit to wrap fish.” When Ryan looked up questioningly, Charlie said, “She cornered Wilma and me coming out of the plaza, and she really laid it on.”

Wilma laughed, and put down her cards. “I had trouble not punching her in the face, right there in front of Tiffany’s.”

Joe hid a smile, imagining Wilma punching out that overdressed airhead reporter. Wilma could do it, too. Her self-defense skills had been well honed over her twenty-year career as a federal officer. But it was true, the pressure from this new editor and reporter and from a few sour citizens, as well as from two city council members, had to be wearing. Particularly on Max, on everyone in the department. Max Harper had served this town well for his entire career. MPPD had one of the lowest crime rates, and one of the highest rates of arrests for crimes reported, of anywhere in the state. But now suddenly the villagers, goaded by misinformation, seemed to have forgotten the high performance of their police. And the invasions weren’t over yet.

So far, the evidence that Detectives Dallas Garza and Kathleen Ray had logged in wasn’t adding up to much. Every set of footprints, whether photographed or in the form of a cast or taken by alternate light source, was different: different shoes, different sizes. The threads and fragments of cloth they’d bagged didn’t match one another, nor did the few strands of human hairs. They had picked up no fingerprints but the victims’ own or those of family members or neighbors. Their canvassing of neighborhoods and the fingerprinting of neighbors were time-consuming and costly. The department had taken men off patrol to help interview, and even the descriptions the victims gave were varied, from two tall men, to a tall man and a blond woman, to a short, stocky man. And to top it all off, the department’s three unknown snitches, who normally would have come up with some useful information, hadn’t even checked in.

The faint fish scent that Kit had found was the first clue the cats had that the cops didn’t. And how could their supposedly human snitch report an elusive smell that no human would easily have discovered? Did a human snitch go around sniffing at doorways?

The invasions hadn’t occurred in any geographic pattern, either, that anyone had been able to figure out, though they were all within the city limits. There was no time pattern. No economic or ethnic or gender or age pattern. Detective Ray had tried correlating all the various elements—time of day, day of the week, sex, age, profession, and ethnicity of victims, locations—into various computer charts, attempting to get a fix on some master plan, but so far she’d come up with nothing. Kathleen Ray might sometimes be a bit too empathetic with the victims, but she was sharp and quick, and was a genius at the computer. The tall, dark-haired beauty had, surprisingly, left a promising modeling career, disenchanted with the people she had to work with. She’d gone back to school and, after graduating from the police academy in San Jose, had signed on with the department as a rookie cop and was fast turning into a capable detective. Now, with Detective Juana Davis on vacation, Harper was relieved to have Kathleen on board.

Max Harper had done three interviews for the Gazette, urging people to take certain precautions to avoid a forced break-in. But not every villager paid attention to precautions, thinking, “That won’t happen to me.” In too many households, that seemed to be the operable response. Folks depended on MPPD to protect them, and gave little thought to how they might protect themselves. So many humans, Joe thought, seemed to have forgotten the principles of self-preservation, relying on others for their security—like pampered housecats who, never having learned to hunt, lay around the house waiting for someone to open the cat food. In Joe’s case, the fact that he might yowl at Ryan to serve up the spaghetti or make him an omelet didn’t mean he couldn’t trot on out to the hills and catch his own supper, when he chose to do so.

At the poker table, Ryan was saying, “Maudie worries me, up there alone with that little boy. I don’t know what it is about her …” Letting the thought drift, she picked up her cards as Dallas dealt, and then looked across at Max. “L.A. still has no lead on the shooter?”

“None.” Max frowned. “What is it? What’s bothering you?”

“I don’t know, something about the way Maudie … When we talked about the shooting, I got the feeling she was holding back. I don’t know what it is, maybe just one of those feelings. Probably means nothing.”

But Joe Grey, watching his housemate, knew exactly the sense of wrongness that bothered Ryan. There was something about Maudie, a shadow behind the scenes, visible only in a certain light.

Max glanced at his cards, realized it was his bet, and slid a dollar to the center of the table. “Maudie was the only witness to the shooting,” he said, “and she swears she couldn’t identify the shooter. The sheriff thinks the three children told the truth, that they saw nothing. Pearl Toola was the only suspect they had. She stayed in L.A. long enough to cooperate in the investigation, then got permission to move down to San Diego. She gave L.A. the address and phone number of a friend there, I guess she didn’t think they’d check.

“She never showed up at that address,” he continued. “L.A. had no further information on her. Because of their heavy workload and no other leads, they put out an APB on her and temporarily shelved the case.”

Dallas dealt the last card of seven-card stud and raised a quarter. Joe was always amused at the high stakes of these friendly games. If a person came out five dollars the winner, that was a big victory, enough to gloat about for days.

Max said, “There’s always the chance the shooter will show up here. I’ve talked with Maudie, suggested she needs to be careful, to report anything that seems strange.”

Ryan looked at him, started to speak, then went silent. So, Joe thought, she hadn’t told him about the truck—but maybe she would soon if Maudie didn’t. Behind them, over in the corner, Rock woke. Lying on his back, he huffed once, staring upside down at the too-noisy humans. Wilma was shuffling the cards when the phone rang.

Ryan rose to answer, listened for a minute, then, “Hang on, I can’t hear with everyone talking.” Glancing across at Wilma and laying down the phone, she headed for the guest room. “Will you hang up for me?” she said, pushing back a lock of stray hair.

Wilma rose quickly at their little private signal. And Joe Grey dropped to the floor. Whatever the call was about, it surely involved Dulcie—or the call was from Dulcie, and that would have to be an emergency. Yawning, trying to look casual, he followed Ryan into the guest room where he could listen as she took the call on the extension.