Cat Coming Home

25

THE YELLOW TOMCAT seemed to know where he was going, moving swiftly away across the roofs above a street of galleries, little restaurants, a bookstore. At the Kestrel Inn, he headed along one wing of the U-shaped building toward the back, where he stood looking down into the motel patio. The courtyard was lit by ground-level lamps at the edge of the brick paving, their soft glow illuminating beds of geraniums and cyclamens. Where a bougainvillea vine climbed to the roof, he scrambled down it and under a flowering camellia bush beside a sliding glass door. From the shingles above, Joe, Dulcie, and Kit could just make out the pale curve of his back beneath the dark, concealing leaves. He peered in through the open glass slider through open draperies, only the screen barring his entry.

One lamp burned near the windows, where a man stood with his back to them. The rear of the room was in shadow. They could hear a woman talking softly but couldn’t see her, couldn’t make out what she was saying. Was the cat with these people, traveling with them? Then surely they knew his talents. No one traveling with an ordinary cat would let him go outside in a strange town and expect him not to wander off lured by his own curiosity and become lost. Only a speaking cat could be left to roam responsibly, at his own pleasure.

Deep within the room the woman appeared, moving toward the front where she sat down on the bed. She was tall and thin, her short blond hair fluffed around her face. She wore shapeless black jeans, a black T-shirt, black boots. Their voices were so soft that from the roof, even with the door open, the cats had to listen closely, cocking their ears, peering over. As the man turned to the dresser, a towel in his hand, they could see that he wore gloves, tightly fitting and flesh colored. Picking up a billfold from the dresser, he slipped it in his pocket and then carefully polished the dresser’s glass top with the towel.

“That went well,” he said. “No delays, no hitches.” His voice was so smug it made Dulcie and Kit angrily lash their tails; Kit hung over the edge, intently watching him.

“This is the last one,” the woman said. “I don’t like this. This isn’t why I came here.”

“It’s them,” Kit whispered, scrambling back from the edge. “Two of them. The man in the car, that’s his voice. And the woman—I thought she was a thin man, in that long black coat and hard shoes.”

The man was saying, “What about the kid? He thinks you’re—”

“That’s all he is. A kid. He’s had a crush on me for years, ever since he was twelve. He thinks he’s a great lover,” she said, laughing. “For the moment, he’s useful enough.”

The man was squarely built. His coal-black hair was collar length but neatly trimmed, his short black beard squarely clipped. Turning away from the dresser, he gripped her shoulders. “If you didn’t come to help me out, why did you come? Why did you want to come here, right under her nose? What the hell are you planning?”

“I came to get what’s mine,” she said sweetly. “And,” she said, laughing, “maybe to deal the last hand.” Moving away from him, she picked up the black raincoat that lay across the chair, shrugged it on. Pulling a dark cap from the pocket, she occupied herself at the mirror, tucking in her hair until not one blond strand was visible. The man approached the door, slid the screen back. Stepping out to the patio, he stood looking around him. He was only steps from the yellow cat concealed among the shrubs. He glanced up once at the roof, seemingly straight at the cats, but they were still, and their eyes slitted nearly closed—surely, in the dark, they were invisible to human sight. His gaze was compelling, his eyes so familiar that Dulcie eased lower against the shingles and slowly backed away. He glanced several times to the left, to a walkway between the rooms that led from the patio to a small parking area. The cats could see a few cars parked back there, one covered with a tarp. After a long while he turned back into the room. Sliding the glass door closed and clicking the lock, he disappeared into the shadows at the back.

The woman moved to join him, switched on a closet light, and removed a small satchel. When he opened the door to the hall, in the sudden wash of light the cats caught a glimpse of a patterned red carpet and of the closed door across the hall. And then the two were gone, closing the door behind them with a double click of the latch and lock. When the cats looked down again at the bushes there was no hint of the yellow tom, no gleam of pale fur beneath the dark foliage.

Was he slinking through the bushes to the motel’s front door, meaning to follow the couple? Or, while the man had stood outside the open screen, had the tom slipped inside and behind a chair, moving so fast that even they, intently watching the bearded man, had missed his stealthy entry?

“Come on,” Joe said, spinning around to follow the darkly clad couple—but Kit was already across the roof and nearly to the street. They crowded against her where she crouched above the front entrance looking down. The pair was just leaving the building. The woman was as tall as her companion; she walked with a long stride so that, swathed in her loose black raincoat, shapeless black pants, and flat black boots, her hair tucked under the genderless cap, she could easily pass for a man. Only her slim hands gave her away, and even as the two headed up the street she pulled off what appeared to be rubber gloves, replacing them with heavier, black leather ones. Beyond the motel, they turned into a corner restaurant that opened to both streets, where the bar stayed open late.

In a minute, a car started on the side street, but when they raced across the roof to look, it was only a gray-haired lady pulling her VW Beetle out of the parallel parking. When they heard another car start, in the motel’s back parking lot, again they ran.

There: a white Toyota pulling away between the lines of parked cars. They could see the darkly dressed couple within, the man driving. He moved quickly onto the street and, a block down, turned up the hill, driving fast, heading in the direction of the freeway. And the car was gone, where not the fastest feline could catch it.

Returning to the patio, they backed down the bougainvillea, through the yellow cat’s scent, to the brick paving. They checked the bushes, but the tomcat wasn’t there. Crowding together before the closed glass, they peered into the darkened room.

Nothing stirred among the shadowed furniture. “The tom’s not there, he’s gone,” Kit said, and before Joe or Dulcie could reply she flicked her fluffy tail and careened away through the bushes, following his scent.

Dulcie gave Joe a questioning stare. He said, “Go on, I’ll catch up. I want a look back there, where they parked.” He watched her gallop away, and then headed for the small parking lot at the back of the motel, a gray shadow among shadows, only his white markings visible.

Rounding the hedge, Joe came face-to-face with the tarp-covered car, parked in the corner where the hedge met the motel wall. He started toward it, then stopped, his nose to the paving examining the scent of the darkly clad couple. Here, unimpeded by the smell of the garden flowers, he tasted both the man’s scent and the woman’s. Both led to the tarp.

The tan cover was made of thin, sleazy canvas, fitted tightly over the big car. The canvas covered the wheels, too, and hugged the ground. Quickly Joe nosed underneath.

It wasn’t as dark under there as he’d expected; the sleazy fabric looked like cheesecloth with the light from the motel shining through. Rearing up between the tarp and the shiny black fender, he picked out the wheel insignia of a Cadillac. Nosing along the big black car, he could see that it was a four-door. The car smelled strongly of the departed couple.

The tires were still warm, and a thin warmth radiated from the engine. When he moved to the back and edged up between the tarp and the license plate, he found it covered with mud just as Kit had described. Pawing the mud away, he traced the numbers. “4LTG747,” he said softly, wishing his recall were as certain and reliable as Kit’s. The tortoiseshell, having all her life memorized folktales, had a memory like a spring-loaded trap. Whatever was caught in it never got away. Had the couple, having used the Cadillac during the invasion, parked it partially out of sight here, and covered it? He had no sure proof to link this Cadillac to the invasions—unless Kathleen Ray got lucky and picked up its tire prints at the scene. But thanks to Kit, the department knew there’d been a black Caddy near the scene.

Thinking back, he was sure he’d seen, days earlier, a tarp-covered car parked here, in fact had been seeing the canvas lump for maybe a couple of weeks. Surely the street patrols had taken note, had maybe checked with the motel to make sure the vehicle belonged to a registered guest. Maybe the two cars were switched back and forth, sometimes the Caddy, sometimes the Toyota, so there was always some vehicle filling out the tarp, and it wouldn’t lie in a flat heap on the paving, calling attention to a car’s absence.

If this car was registered at the desk, they’d have the license number, but he’d bet it wasn’t. Right now, he wanted to pass the information along to the department. Maybe the cops could get here while the engine was still warm, take a look, run the plate, maybe dust for prints. And Joe took off fast for Dulcie’s house, for the nearest phone; he’d just zip in through Dulcie’s cat door onto Wilma’s desk and punch in 911, another tip from the snitch, he thought, smiling. Racing across the shingles to call the department, he was eager to see what the answering detective would find, and what information he might pick up from the desk clerk, too. Tonight was the first real break they’d had, with the yellow cat leading Kit to the invasion and then to two of the perps and their cars. Thinking about the strange tom’s contribution, Joe’s curiosity burned brighter even than did Kit’s—made him want to be in two places at once: watching a detective go over the Caddy, and finding out more about one old yellow tomcat who, one way or the other, must have a stake in these crimes.