Cat Deck The Halls

12

T HE THREE CATS crouched shivering on the roof of the Molena Point Little Theater, able only to listen to the music of The Nutcracker; on this cold night they could not enjoy the dancing and costumes and sets. Ordinarily, they would have slipped inside at the last minute behind the crowding audience, but with the icy wind blowing in through the open doors, those doors had been closed too quickly.

But even though they were shut out in the cold, the music filled their heads, dancing up through the roof. Kit’s fluffy tail twitched in delighted rhythm to the lilting cadences, to visions of Marie and Clara and the Nutcracker and the King of the Mice, to all the convoluted and interwoven scenes of the tale so sharply brought to life in the bright music. And now, as the theater let out, they peered down at the happy, departing crowd, looking for their friends.

Charlie Harper and Dorothy Street were the first of their party to emerge, presumably leaving their companions in the lobby lost in scattered conversations. As the two women headed up the street, the cats followed, padding across the icy roofs and across slippery oak branches and more roofs, making straight for the Patio Café. There the cats paused on the clay tiles looking down to the restaurant’s outdoor terrace as Charlie and Dorothy were seated. In the center of the terrace, a fire burned in the round brick fire pit, sending up welcome heat to warm their fur and paws and their cold noses. The patio, decorated with red swags along the eaves and huge pots of poinsettias, was crowded with late, cheerful diners, most of them talking about the ballet.

“Charlie had a ticket for Max,” Joe said. “I don’t think he’s into ballet, he opted out. Said because of the murder.”

“If not for the murder, he’d have gone,” Dulcie said shortly. “He’d go almost anywhere, to enjoy an evening out with Charlie.” She looked hard at Joe. “You like The Nutcracker, you just don’t want to admit it.” But then she turned her attention to Charlie and Dorothy.

The two women had been seated at a big round table beside the fire pit; though they were almost directly beneath the cats, their low conversation was hard to hear among the rising tangle of voices. Only Charlie was aware of them on the roof above. She glanced up once as they basked in the warmth from the blaze; she watched them sniffing at the heady scents of broiled shrimp and lobster, and she raised an eyebrow, then looked away again, hiding her smile.

The brick patio was enclosed on two sides by the restaurant itself, the other two by a two-foot-high wall topped with the pots of poinsettias and bright red winter cyclamens separating the café from the sidewalk. The street beyond was busy with tourists and locals coming from the theater or enjoying last-minute, late-evening Christmas shopping. The whole village was festive tonight, the shop doors hung with wreaths, the overhanging oaks and pines strung with colored lights-and their friends looked festive, too. The cats seldom saw Charlie in anything but jeans. Tonight she wore a soft, metallic-gold tunic over slim black pants, her untamable, kinky red hair bound back with a heavy gold clip, and a thick, golden stole over her shoulders. Dorothy Street was sharply tailored, very handsome with her sleek, dark hair, and her winter tan from running the beach, her clean beauty set off by a black silk blazer over crisp white pants and white boots. She had let her dark hair grow long, and was wearing it in a braid wrapped smoothly around her head-a more serious, finished look than the short, windblown mop she’d sported when she worked for Patty Rose as the retired actress’s assistant, an efficient young secretary who often went to work in jeans and sweatshirt and smelling of the sea. Now, as Patty’s heir and new owner of the inn, and as trustee for the Patty Rose Home and School, she presented a far more businesslike demeanor. The cats weren’t sure they liked her new look; but they supposed that status-conscious humans were impressed, and that that was good for business.

Dorothy was talking about a break-in at the Home, speaking so softly that over the noise of the other diners, the cats had to crouch low across the roof gutter to hear at all.

“Nothing was taken,” Dorothy was saying. “There’s nothing in there to take. Why would someone break into that old, empty studio? Not a stick of furniture, you can see through the windows that it’s empty. But the front door was jimmied last night, fresh scars in the molding. Last week, after we found the back door open, we changed the locks. But the next morning, two of the boys came to tell me they’d found a window open, banging in the wind.

“I went over, found the lock broken, and called the department again. It’s embarrassing to have to call them out for such a small thing, but…Whatever this is about, we need to find the cause before Ryan starts work. She’ll have material and power tools stored in there.”

Above, on the roof, the cats glanced at one another, wondering if that had been the work of the old tramp. On these cold nights, that old stone studio would be dry, all right, just as he’d said, a welcome retreat from rain and wind.

Charlie pushed back an escaped strand of red hair and gave the waiter a long, annoyed look where he lingered just beyond their table, coffeepot in hand. Charlie liked good service, but she didn’t like overt attention.

“The old window locks were easy enough to break,” Dorothy said. “Ryan says they were the original ones. That studio is nearly a hundred years old. She sent a carpenter over to replace them.”

Dorothy sipped her coffee. “That, combined with whatever happened in the plaza last night, is giving me the fidgets. I keep thinking about our Christmas bazaar, in a just few days, about how vulnerable we are up there, how vulnerable the children could be.

“I’ve hired six more guards,” she said softly, “besides the regular three.”

“You really do expect trouble? But…”

“I don’t know what to expect.”

Charlie frowned. “You think there’s some connection between the plaza murder and the break-ins?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. But the two things at once…If we’d had only a simple break-in…But three times, without anything to steal. That’s so strange.”

“No possessions of Anna Stanhope’s left forgotten? Maybe tucked away in a closet?”

“Nothing. The few paintings that were left locked up in there, all those years after she died, and a few books and papers, we’d already removed and stored safely. Her son had long ago sent most of her remaining work up to her gallery in the city.”

“I understand that Anna was rather secretive, inclined to stash things away.”

Dorothy smiled. “I really don’t think there was anything left hidden. There’s nowhere to hide anything in that studio. I think that’s one of those stories that gets started-maybe John Stanhope started it, to boost the price of the studio when he sold it. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

John Stanhope, Anna’s son, had built the big, newer mansion on the property some years after Anna died. The mansion badly dwarfed the small, stone studio where Anna had lived and worked. Later he’d sold the studio as a separate dwelling, but had retained most of the estate grounds with the new mansion. When actress Patty Rose bought the mansion, wanting to convert it to a children’s home, the smaller house was not available. Then last year, after Patty died, the studio came on the market again, and Dorothy, representing the Patty Rose Trust, quickly bought it, thus reuniting the property. She meant to turn the historic studio into additional classrooms for the children, and she badly wanted to get started with the work right after the holidays.

“These break-ins made me feel so…not just vulnerable,” Dorothy said, “but as if I’ve let Anna Stanhope down. She loved that old studio, she would not have liked this invasion. Her journal is full of entries about how happy she was there, and now I feel responsible that this has happened.

“But most of all, I’m worried for the children. I don’t want…It’s almost like a personal attack on the children themselves, that someone would break into the Home, where we’ve tried to make everything safe for them. Those kids…”

“Those orphan kids are like your own babies,” Charlie said. “But-you don’t think the intruder was some jealous village child, playing pranks?”

“That’s possible, I suppose. Certainly none of our children would do that.” Dorothy smoothed her dark hair. “Why do I keep trying to tie the break-ins to the murder in the plaza? Assuming there was a murder. How could there be a connection? Why do I keep thinking of that?”

Charlie couldn’t answer.

“I don’t mean to talk about things you aren’t free to discuss.”

“There isn’t much to discuss-not until Max knows more about what happened there. Dorothy, I just don’t have any answers.”

“It isn’t my nature to fly apart,” Dorothy said. “I guess, after Patty was murdered last year, and the things that happened to her daughter and grandchild, that I’m overly nervous about our kids.”

“You have a right to be anxious. But you have extra guards in place, and you use an excellent agency. Have you talked with Max about…”

They looked up as Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw along with Cora Lee French came in, crossing the terrace to join them. Cora Lee’s cousin, Donnie, and her housemate, Gabrielle Row, came in behind them, holding hands like youngsters, the two so wrapped up in each other that the cats had to smile. A Christmas romance, Dulcie thought, purring. It pleased her when older people found that kind of happiness. She looked at Donnie’s blond and white hair, and at Gabrielle’s blond dyed hair that was very likely graying, too, under that elegant color. The two were so attentive to each other that they hardly seemed to know anyone else was present.

The Greenlaws sat down next to Charlie. Lucinda had pulled a warm cashmere stole close around her shoulders, over her silver-toned wool suit. The elderly Greenlaw couple was the tortoiseshell kit’s human family, a tall pair of octogenarian newlyweds as spry and adventurous as folks half their age. Pedric looked handsome tonight in a pale cashmere sport coat, white shirt, and camel-toned tie and black slacks. The new arrivals had, as they entered the patio, also been talking about the Stanhope house, the subject having been brought to their attention by a large display in the theater lobby showing old photographs of Anna Stanhope’s studio and giving some of Anna’s background, as promotion for the Home’s bazaar and auction on Sunday.

“Over eighty years ago,” Cora Lee said, sitting down across from Charlie. “The village was really bohemian, then. So many famous names-Jack London, John Steinbeck, and a lot of lesser folk, all a close-knit group with Anna Stanhope. She worked for years in that small stone studio, hidden back in the woods.” Cora Lee’s dusky Creole beauty was set off by a simple cream velvet suit. Blond, bejeweled Gabrielle was overdressed as usual in a long blue satin gown, too much bright jewelry, and a pale real fox wrap. Donnie looked handsome indeed in a cream-colored cashmere suit, pale blue shirt, and tie-perhaps a bit overdressed or citified for the village, but a man whom all the women on the terrace were glancing at with thinly concealed interest.

“Where’s Lori?” Charlie asked Cora Lee. “She didn’t want to come?”

“We left her and Dillon holed up with that…” Gabrielle began; she went quiet at Charlie’s annoyed look and the faint shake of her head. Gabrielle looked surprised. Donnie hugged her closer, looking back at Charlie with sour disapproval, as if his ladylove could do or say no wrong.

“…busy with their playhouse,” Gabrielle finished, almost simpering. “I never saw two children work so long at anything. It’s really quite unusual.”

Everyone at the table knew that Gabrielle thought the playhouse was silly, that young girls should not undertake that kind of challenge against adult contenders. That two young girls could never complete such demanding carpentry work, that there was no way they could produce an acceptable construction, let alone win the huge prize they were hoping for. Gabrielle’s criticism was a sharp bone of contention between her and Cora Lee, one that Cora Lee tried her best to hide in deference to Donnie’s infatuation with her housemate.

Obviously, Charlie thought, Gabrielle had not bothered to look at the nearly finished playhouse, had not wanted to see how wonderful it was, and how well constructed. Nor had she considered that Dillon had trained for some time as a carpenter’s apprentice to Ryan Flannery. As Donnie tried to cheer Gabrielle, cajoling and flattering her, Charlie noticed her ring.

Reaching across the table, Charlie gently took Gabrielle’s hand, holding it up so the large diamond on her third finger gleamed in the firelight. Everyone at their table stopped talking, then all talked at once congratulating them as Gabrielle and Donnie beamed. Gabrielle managed to blush, and Donnie’s blue eyes were as bright and excited as the eyes of a boy. Across the table, Cora Lee smiled upon the happy couple like a proud parent.

“When did this happen?” Lucinda said. “When did you become officially engaged?”

“This afternoon,” Gabrielle said softly. “Donnie…I…It was a surprise. I…I’m still shaken. And it looks like we might move up to the city, too.”

“A job offer,” Donnie said. “They called this afternoon. A large company. If it pans out, looks like I might work myself into a managerial position within a year.”

They were still exclaiming and congratulating when the waiter brought additional menus and took drink orders, then turned away to linger, again, inside the door to the kitchen, keeping an eye on the tables. He returned with two additional menus as Clyde Damen and Ryan Flannery crossed the patio to join them.

Ryan looked beautiful tonight, her short dark hair windblown, her green eyes set off by a green velvet pullover, topping a slim black skirt, a green velvet shawl around her shoulders. The cats liked seeing their human friends dressed up; they were used to seeing Ryan and Charlie in comfortable jeans and work boots, Ryan because she was a builder, Charlie because she and Max kept horses up at their small ranch among the Molena Point hills.

And Clyde, who favored old worn jeans and ragged T-shirts, had made an effort, too. Joe Grey’s housemate was turned out in a tan suede sport coat, a black turtleneck, and cream slacks, was newly shaved, and his dark hair freshly cut. As he held Ryan’s chair, Dorothy looked up at Ryan questioningly.

“Nothing yet,” Ryan said, sitting down. “We could be in our graves before we get this permit.” As the project’s contractor, Ryan was out of patience waiting for city and county permits and the final okay from the historical society. “The planning commission knows you want to have the classrooms ready by spring semester, they know you have four new teachers coming.”

Dorothy nodded. “Without the new space, we’ll be really crowded. Well, we’ll make do-crowded doesn’t really matter, if the kids are excited about what they’re learning. Give them an intellectual challenge, show them how to run with it, and they’re happy.

“They’re looking forward to the new quarters, and to having a real fireplace in the big classroom, but they understand about the Historical Society-they know the old stone house is the only real monument left to Anna Stanhope.”

Lucinda said, “Her studio in the woods must have been lovely then, before her son cut down so many trees and built that big ostentatious mansion-though in the long run, that turned into a blessing, as if it was always meant to be a children’s home.”

“Strange to think,” Charlie said, “about the wild parties and unleashed sex and drugs that went on, when those things were far less common. And now the Stanhope house is a children’s refuge from just that kind of ugliness.”

“Those artists did more partying than work,” Gabrielle said, fluffing her fur wrap. “They just played at being artists and writers.”

“Not all of them,” Cora Lee said. “Not Anna Stanhope, she was a serious painter. She must have managed, somehow, to protect her privacy and working time. She was very dedicated, and very fine. She left a huge legacy of work.” Anna Stanhope’s paintings appeared in many fine collections and were included in many art histories, the landscapes jewel rich in color, the essence of scenes they saw around them every day in the shifting California light.

“Haven’t you ever wondered,” Gabrielle said, “why her son boarded up the house all those years? I’m surprised the city let him.”

“It was his property,” Dorothy said. “He paid the taxes. He wasn’t breaking any law if he wanted to close it up. And he did come down from San Francisco sometimes, to check on its condition.”

“To clear out her paintings,” Gabrielle said. “Sold them a few at a time, in that gallery in the city.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to flood the market,” Cora Lee suggested. “They’ve increased so much in value.” Cora Lee’s own background as an artist lent her a quiet authority that silenced her housemate. Donnie, caught between his cousin and his fiancée, kept out of it, silently sipping his drink. Dulcie was watching him, frowning, when her own housemate appeared hurrying up the street to join them.

Earlier in the evening, Dulcie had lain on the bed as Wilma dressed, and the tabby had pawed through Wilma’s jewelry box helping to choose which barrette Wilma would wear. They had agreed on an onyx-and-silver creation to clip back Wilma’s long silver hair and to complement her soft red jacket and long paisley skirt. Wilma Getz might be in her early sixties, but her tall figure was as slim as a girl’s. She walked several miles a day, and since she’d been kidnapped last summer, she worked out more often at the village gym, intending to be in far better shape if another of her old ex-parolees surprised her.

Dulcie watched her swing in through the patio’s little iron gate, cross between the crowded tables, and pull out the last chair at the big round table, sneaking a look underneath to see if the cats were there waiting for a bit of supper. Not seeing them, she glanced up to the roof, and hid a little smile.

When the waiter came for their orders, Wilma chose a shrimp bisque and, for dessert, a rich crème brûlé. Both were among Dulcie’s favorites. When Wilma ordered two of each, one meal for herself and one to go, Dulcie, above on the roof, hungrily licked her whiskers.

As Wilma sipped her coffee, Ryan looked across the table to the Greenlaws. “When do you want to go over plans for your remodel? I can come by any day, but better if it rains. We’re just starting a new house, so it’s all outside work, and rain will give me some free time. We’ve finished both the current remodels-both couples wanted to be settled back in by Christmas.” She grinned. “They’ll have to hustle. We did the best we could, but Christmas is almost on us.”

“What about now, tonight?” Lucinda said eagerly, glancing at Pedric.

The old man nodded. “Sooner the better. But if you’re starting a new job…”

“Just for a look?” Lucinda said. “A general idea, maybe enough to give us a rough estimate?”

“Enough,” Ryan said, “so I can draw a rough plan of the space and some tentative sketches, and can suggest some materials you could look at. The only thing that will hold me up is when we get the permit for the children’s home. Then it will be all-out, until it’s finished.”

“I still say,” Gabrielle said darkly, “it’s the public-school children who were allowed to transfer up there that has the city so riled and reluctant to issue the permit. I don’t see why those children did that.”

“Because the school is better,” Wilma said shortly. “Because those kids were bored out of their minds in public school.”

Gabrielle huffed impatiently, as if Wilma knew nothing about children or about learning.

The small exodus of students from public school up to Patty Rose had created a deep anger among some of the village teachers. Both Lori and Dillon had transferred, both girls rebelling when Lori was told by her principal that she was not allowed to attend the school of her choice. Lori Reed did not take well to being told that she could not do what she longed to do-not without a logical reason, not by strangers, certainly not by a county bureaucracy. “What do they mean, I can’t?” Lori had ranted. “When did this country turn into a slave state!” The girls said that a few teachers were so dull, they put everyone to sleep, that they weren’t learning anything, that all they did was follow workbooks like robots, so why shouldn’t they turn to a school that challenged them? Dillon’s parents and Cora Lee had fought the school officials for months to make that happen.

“Our remodel,” Lucinda was telling Ryan, “is pretty straightforward, if we can turn the half bath into a small kitchen. And it’s all inside work, so maybe you could work on rainy days when you can’t be on the new job.”

“The way the weather’s been,” Ryan said, “an inside job for rainy days will be a big help, if you can live with the delays. It could be a very long delay, for the Orphans’ Home, and that could be frustrating for you.” That was the biggest complaint Ryan heard about contractors, that they would juggle several jobs at once, pull men back and forth, and prolong all the work. Some clients were demanding penalty agreements from contractors, a hundred dollars a day off the bill, for not meeting the finish date.

“We don’t mind delays,” Pedric said. “One thing, though. First day you have free, could you take a look at the plumbing? There seems to be a leak somewhere. Sometimes for short periods we hear water running, but then it stops. We’ve checked inside and out, but we can find nothing.”

“Could you come tonight?” Lucinda said again, eagerly.

Ryan glanced at her watch. “It isn’t too late for you?”

“Ordinarily, it might be,” Lucinda said, laughing. “I think, tonight, we’re too energized, our heads too full of the ballet, to go right to bed, even to read. And too full of ideas for the apartment.”

Ryan nodded, glancing at Clyde. “We’ll meet you up at your place, then.”

Above them on the roof, the kit moved nervously. She wanted to be home before Ryan got there and they all went downstairs to those empty rooms.

Kit, too, had puzzled over the strange behavior of the water pipes. And prowling the backyard, she’d thought she caught the scent of a stranger. Though sometimes the neighbors crossed there, coming down from the street above rather than going around the block, so she couldn’t be sure-but now suddenly as she thought about her old folks and Ryan and Clyde entering those dark rooms, a shock of unease gripped the tortoiseshell cat. And her fear sent her spinning away toward home, racing across the rooftops, wanting to have a look before her humans entered that empty downstairs apartment.