Cat Coming Home

30

IN THE DAMEN kitchen, the sun’s first light shone through the bay window brightening the granite counter and warming Joe Grey’s back, where he sat watching Ryan flip pancakes. She was dressed in work jeans, a yellow sweatshirt, a frilly apron, and fuzzy pink slippers, her heavy boots waiting in the living room by the front door. The smell of pancakes, frying bacon, and warming syrup was so strong it made the tomcat drool. The table was set with three places, two with the conventional mats, napkins, and silverware, one with Joe Grey’s plastic place mat printed with a motif of running mice, a gift from Ryan that might be a bit cutesy, but that amused the tomcat. Clyde, in their bachelor days, had never thought to offer him a place mat. Except maybe the want ads, which neither of them ever read. Across the room on the flowered easy chair, little white Snowball lay curled up alone, purring with the warmth of the cushions into which she had burrowed, waiting for her can of gourmet cat food to be served up. Beside her chair Rock waited, too, held in place only by Ryan’s earlier command to “Down. Stay.” His pale yellow eyes never left the stove, his sighs were frequent and dramatic.

“Don’t forget the kippers,” Joe told Ryan, licking a front paw. “Pancakes are nothing without kippers.”

She turned to look at him. “Pancakes with kippers are as disgusting as it gets. You’re lucky Clyde and I put up with the smell of fish first thing in the morning. And what about poor Rock? You know he loves kippers, and you know he can’t have them. I think you eat them just to tease him.”

“Rock understands,” Joe told her.

“He doesn’t understand at all. He thinks it’s unfair that you get treats that he can’t have. It’s hard enough for him to deal with a cat giving him orders, without tormenting him with your dietary indulgences. Don’t you ever think how he feels?”

“He’s happy—he loves obeying my orders,” Joe told her smugly. A less intelligent dog might have problems with a speaking cat giving him obedience commands, but Rock had learned early on to accept Joe’s strangeness with good will. The big Weimaraner, at first shocked and then curious when the gray cat spoke to him, had come to respect the tomcat’s talents, though still he liked to tease Joe, with a keen, doggy humor.

“As to the kippers, you know I need my protein,” Joe said, greedily eyeing the browning pancakes and stifling a yawn.

Ryan turned to look at him. “What you need is sleep. I heard you slide open your tower window, coming home. It was after three this morning.” Carefully she laid the delicate, salty fishes on his warm pancakes and set his plate on the table.

Leaping to his place mat, Joe tucked into his breakfast, thinking about his phone call to Max last night, wondering what Max would do with the information, with Joe’s suggestion that the blonde in the motel could be Maudie’s ex-daughter-in-law. The link between Pearl and the Colletto brothers left Joe edgy with unanswered questions, scattered information yet to be sorted out. He’d nearly finished his pancakes and kippers when he heard the morning paper hit the front door. Heard Clyde’s feet, coming down the stairs, make a detour out the front to pick up the daily rag. Sounded like he was wearing his heavy boots; that meant a workday at the cottage. He clumped into the kitchen dressed in ragged jeans and a khaki work shirt, sat down at the table generously laying the paper between them so Joe, too, could scan the front page.

LONE WOMAN AT THE MERCY OF UNKNOWN CRIMINALS

When Nannette Garver answered her doorbell yesterday evening the door was shoved in her face, knocking her down. Two men gagged and beat her, robbed her, broke and destroyed everything in her house. There were no police patrols on the street to deter such a crime and Nannette lay tied up for many hours before she was found and released. It is troubling indeed to realize how at the mercy of unknown criminals a lone woman is in our village, without the police protection our taxes pay for …

Stifling a rude comment, the tomcat licked his plate clean. Only then did he finish reading the vitriolic article, his ears flattened with rage. “They call this journalism? This garbage? I don’t even want to see the editorial page.”

“This is an editorial,” Clyde said with equal disgust, and turned to the actual editorial page at the back, where Nancyanne Prewitt’s inaccurate interpretation of last night’s events occupied two additional columns. Crowded together, Clyde and Joe read with irritated grumbles. Ryan put Clyde’s plate down on the table beside the Gazette, scanned the article, but made no comment. She sat down at her own place, trying to ignore the smell of kippers, and quietly ate her breakfast, choosing not to comment on the Gazette’s vitriol. Talking cats reading the local paper, punctuating the silence with angry comments, was still a bit much, first thing in the morning, she was still trying to get used to these changes in her life. She looked up at a knock from the front door and Charlie’s voice through the new electronic speaker, and rose to let her in.

After the third home invasion, Ryan had installed a simple intercom for the front door in the interests of security and peace of mind. No more leaving the door on the latch for drop-ins. Charlie followed her on back, sat down at the table between Ryan’s place and Joe, and accepted a cup of coffee. She was dressed in jeans and boots, a leather jacket over her sweatshirt, her red hair tangled from the morning wind. She barely glanced at the paper.

Clyde said, “You’ve read it?”

She nodded.

“Has Max seen it?”

Again, a nod. “At least the reporter didn’t have access to the holdbacks.”

“What holdbacks?” Clyde asked.

Joe said, “There were two cars parked near the scene. A black Cadillac and an old, junky pickup.”

All three looked at Joe. Clyde said, “Did you see the drivers?”

“I didn’t, Kit did. She called it in. A black-haired, middle-aged man was driving the Cadillac. Black shirt, short black beard neatly clipped. The other two were tall, darkly dressed. We think one was a woman; she showed up later at the Kestrel Inn, a blonde.” He told them what they’d seen at the motel, the couple switching the cars under the tarp. He left out the part about the yellow tomcat. “By the time I called the department and got back to the motel, Dallas was there and both cars were gone. He got a nice plaster cast of a partial tread mark; we’ll see where that leads.”

“A cast complete with gray cat hairs,” Charlie said dryly.

Joe felt his breakfast turn sour.

“Not to worry,” Charlie said, stroking him. “I told Max I’ve seen a gray and white cat around that motel, that I thought she lived there, or nearby.” Motel cats were common in the village. Often guests inquired, when making reservations, if there was an in-house cat, and then upon arrival they would seek out the little four-legged PR executive for a pet and a cuddle. Some guests liked to share supper in their rooms with the resident cat. If the manager knew them from past visits, this was often allowed, and a special meal was served for the feline host or hostess.

“So what else do they have?” Clyde said. “One tire cast, with cat hairs. Fingerprints? Footprints?”

“They have footprints,” Charlie said. “Max didn’t go into a lot of detail, he only got a couple of hours’ sleep. He was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that I have to think this is coming together. He mentioned something about a connection to someone in Soledad, someone with ties to the village or to some parolee.”

“If there’s a parolee mixed in,” Clyde said, “maybe his parole officer will come up with some information.”

Ryan shrugged. “Probation and parole is stretched pretty thin. State parole is running caseloads of three to four hundred.” Ryan’s dad had recently retired as chief of the federal probation office in San Francisco, and she’d followed with interest the increasing strains on the various state and federal departments.

Clyde glanced again at the front page. “What about the two restaurant break-ins? Anything there?”

“Same as the others,” Charlie said with disgust. “Lots of damage, not much taken. Obviously diversionary, but a terrible thing for the owners.”

Ryan finished her pancakes and reached for the front page. She glanced at the first few lines, about the invasion, scowled at the tone of the article, folded the paper, and laid it facedown on the table. “Street patrol should have been right there on the spot. Oh, right. Should have been sitting right there waiting for someone to come along and break the door in.” She looked at Joe. “I’m with you, I don’t want to even see what Nancyanne Prewitt has to say. One good thing,” she said, “the thicker these new people at the Gazette lay it on, the less likely people are to buy their garbage.”

“I hope,” Charlie said. She reached to scratch Joe’s ears. “The information you cats picked up last night—the descriptions, the tire track, the motel … that’s a huge help. Between you cats and the department,” she said, stroking his back, “you’ll get these SOBs sorted out.”

Joe seldom heard Charlie swear. But then, it wasn’t every day someone came after Max like this—and Joe had no doubt that was the scenario. He just hoped she was right, and that the case would be resolved before anything worse happened.

Joe wasn’t sure why he hadn’t mentioned the yellow tomcat, why he hadn’t shared with them this strange cat’s part in last night’s surveillance. Maybe, he thought ashamedly, he wanted all the glory for himself, and for Dulcie and Kit? Or maybe it was because he knew no more about the yellow cat than he did about the invaders, didn’t have a clue what the cat really wanted or why he was here in the village. Until he had a handle on that, maybe he didn’t want to get into a long and pointless discussion.

Ryan said, “This Arlie Risso? This newcomer in the village who’s been complaining about the invasions?”

Charlie nodded. “I’ve heard the name.”

“He moved here about a month ago,” Ryan said. “I think he bought a house; he was in Haller’s Building Supply a couple of days ago when I picked up a lumber order, he was buying some replacement hardware. He’s been here less than a month, he said. He was complaining loudly about the invasions, going on to George Haller. When I heard him bitching, I moved away among the aisles where I could listen. He said he meant to be at the city council meeting, see what excuse the police have for ‘this rash of crimes,’ as he calls it.” She looked at Joe. “Black hair, neat little black beard. Well built, maybe in his sixties. Sounds like he’s going to raise hell at the meeting.”

“We’ll be there,” Clyde said with interest.

Charlie said, “Not me, I don’t want it to look as if the chief needs his wife for backup. But I’d sure like to be a fly on the wall.”

“The meeting is when?” Joe said in an offhand manner.

They all looked at him. Clyde said, “No way,” and helped himself to the last pancake.

“Why shouldn’t he go?” Ryan said. “He goes everywhere else.”

Clyde scowled at her. “Have you ever been to a council meeting?”

Ryan shook her head.

“The room’s too open, there’s nowhere for a cat to hide. Space under the pews is open, and only a bare wall at the back. I can just see the mayor dragging Joe out by his furry neck.”

“You don’t have to be so graphic,” Joe snapped. Though he knew the room didn’t lend itself well to feline surveillance. He thought about the windowsills, but those skinny strips were way too narrow even for a cat to cling to. He could perch on a branch outside with his ear to the glass, except that the meetings started at four-thirty, and it would still be light out. He’d be seen from within like one of those paper cutout cats decorating grade-school windows for Halloween. He was wondering how to bring this off when Ryan caught his eye as she reached for the bacon, gave him a quick look of complicity.

Joe licked a last smear of kippers from his whiskers, hiding a smile, and before the discussion could go further he dropped to the floor and headed for the living room and his well-clawed easy chair. Ryan would smuggle him in, and not by his furry neck. Yawning, Joe curled up on the ragged chair, thankful once again that Clyde had married a woman of such keen imagination and sly complicity, a woman more than willing to bend the rules for a deserving accomplice.