Cat Deck The Halls

3

T HE GRAY TOMCAT lay on his back, his four white paws in the air, his sleek silver body stretched out full length across the king-size bed, forcing his sleeping human housemate to the edge. Clyde Damen’s left arm hung over the side, his knuckles resting on the cold hardwood floor; all night Joe Grey had been nudging him away from the center; all night Clyde had unknowingly given, inch by inch, to the tomcat’s stubborn possession. Now, as Joe lay contentedly snoring, pressing his paw against Clyde ’s shoulder bidding for ever more space, suddenly he jerked wide-awake and flipped right side up, intently listening.

The sound was soft.

It came from the roof above. The rhythmic thumping of an animal racing across the shingles.

The next instant, the running paused. He heard a small window slide open just above him. Then the familiar flapping of his plastic cat door that led from his rooftop cat tower down through the ceiling onto a wide rafter in the next room of the master suite.

Whoever had entered was now inside the house. Cat or raccoon, poised on the rafter above Clyde ’s desk in the adjoining study.

No strange cat came into Joe’s personal territory without serious damage. A raccoon or possum entered only at risk of its life.

The flapping of the cat door slowed and stilled. Then a hard thump as the intruder dropped down from the rafter onto Clyde ’s desk. Joe crouched to leap, his gray fur bristling, crouched to do battle when he saw her…

Her yellow eyes were huge as she leaped from the desk, her dark, fluffy tail lashing and switching as she came racing into the bedroom and hit the bed leaping over Clyde wild with panic and fear, talking so fast that he could understand nothing. Before he could make sense of what she was trying to tell him, she was off the bed again in a froth of impatience and back onto the desk, where she hit the speaker button, shouting into the phone.

“A dead man, dead with a shot in his head in the plaza under the Christmas tree and a little child in his arms scared and crying. Hurry! Oh, hurry, Mabel, before the killer comes back! Tell them to hurry!” And even as Joe leaped to the desk beside her, hearing the dispatcher’s familiar voice, they heard the first siren leave Molena Point PD, and then the beeping of a rescue unit careening out of the fire station. Kit’s eyes were black with fear, she trembled against him crying, “The child, Joe. The little child…”

“Tell me on the way,” Joe said as he sailed to the rafter. Together they crowded out Joe’s cat door and through his tower to the roof-where Kit bolted away, Joe racing after her across the shingles, down to Clyde’s back patio wall and up again to the two-story wall that separated their patio from the shopping plaza.

When the plaza was originally planned, both Clyde and the tomcat had fumed because the wall proposed along their back property line would block their view of the green hills that rose to the east of the village and hide the sunrises they both enjoyed. Clyde had said the wall would destroy property values along the entire street, but that hadn’t happened.

With Ryan Flannery’s innovative design and construction, their scruffy backyard had been transformed into a handsome outdoor living area, a private retreat clearly defined and sheltered by the white plaster wall along which Joe and Kit now raced, at last dropping down onto a roof of the plaza shops. Kit never stopped talking, blurting out the details of the dead body in such a garble that Joe had a hard time making sense of what she was trying to tell him. For a moment he saw the plaza as it had been late that afternoon, hours earlier, when he and Kit and his tabby lady, Dulcie, had sat atop the wall watching the procession of white-robed carolers come up Ocean Avenue from the Community Church, gliding regally in their long robes to the little park across from the plaza. In the last rays of winter sun, they had stretched out on the roof tiles enjoying the Christmas carols, and the Christmas tree that rose beside them, its decorations a bright feast of color, the rocking horse and oversize toys richly painted. But now, just after midnight, the little park was dark and deserted, and the lights of the tree shone even brighter-though not as bright as the red strobe lights that pulsed atop the rescue vehicle that had backed in among the gardens, and the half-dozen squad cars parked at the entry to the plaza-and all across the shadowed gardens, uniformed cops moved fast, the beams from their flashlights swinging into shop entries and in through shop windows, picking out rich wares and searching the shadows within.

The ambulance stood with its back door open facing the Christmas tree. A stretcher stood on the sidewalk. Both were empty.

“So where’s the victim?” Joe said, studying Kit. “You said there was a body under the tree, and a clinging child.”

“It was there! And the child was there. Maybe in the ambulance?” Kit said hopefully, crouching to peer deeper in through the van’s open door.

“You can see there’s no body,” Joe said flatly, just the usual medical equipment, cots, oxygen tanks, who knew wat else? He looked at her patiently. Two medics stood beside the van with Dallas Garza as the detective spoke on his radio. As the cats drew closer, Garza clicked off and stood studying the green plastic cloth beneath the wooden toys where it was rumpled and awry, the toys knocked roughly aside. There was no body there and no child, and the tomcat looked at Kit with narrowed yellow eyes, his silver ears back, the white streak down his nose drawn into a harsh feline scowl.

“What the hell are you up to, Kit? You called them out here on a ruse? Some kind of…”

But the space beneath the tree was disturbed, and was splattered with blood; Joe could smell the blood, and he could smell death. And he said no more. They watched Dallas Garza study the short trail of blood, seeing where it led, and then look away at the plaza gardens, his dark eyes taking in the shadows beneath the small trees. Joe glared at Kit.

“There was a body, Joe! I swear! There was a child! A scared little girl with the dead man’s blood on her sweater! I suppose it was his blood,” she said. “Or was it the child’s blood? Oh, was the child hurt, too?” Crouching at the edge of the roof, Kit peered down into the windows of the squad cars, still looking for the victims. She could see no one, no glimpse of long black hair and dark eyes, no little white sweater. She looked at Joe forlornly. And even if his nose hadn’t told him, Joe would know she hadn’t made this up-Kit did not make up disasters.

“What will Garza do now?” Kit whispered. “Will they all go away, will they think it’s a hoax? But the blood…”

The paramedics had sat down on the back bumper of their vehicle, waiting for someone to come up with a victim. Detective Garza, stepping carefully around the tree, began to take photographs. Beyond the Christmas tree in the darker reaches of the plaza, officers continued to search, and on the dark streets beyond the plaza, squad cars slipped along like silent, hunting hounds, their sudden spotlights sweeping into sheltered doorways and down narrow walkways-and before Joe could stop her, Kit leaped off the roof into a pine tree and down to the plaza gardens to disappear among the flowers and shadows in her own search for the frightened child.

T HE MOMENT THE running footsteps had ceased and the dark street had grown silent again, when he’d been able to see no one watching among the shadows, the killer had hurried around to the main street to the rental car parked in front of the plaza-if someone had seen the shooting, and had called the cops, he had only seconds to get the body out.

Backing quickly in over the curb between the plaza gardens, and stepping out, he’d seen that the kid was gone. That scared him. Where the hell? Well, he had no time to look for her, and anyway, she wouldn’t talk. He’d dragged the body up the walk and into the front seat, pushing it down partially under the dash, and at the last instant he’d grabbed the ragged cloth doll-it was obviously handmade, and might be traced, and he didn’t need that kind of evidence. Swinging into the driver’s seat, he’d sped away from Ocean heading for the nearest hiding place of the seven he’d pinpointed earlier, this one just two blocks away. All these residential streets were dark, no streetlights to deal with in this quaint little town. Pulling into the drive, he’d heard the first siren, and he’d backed the car around behind the row of tall bushes. The house was empty and dark, the part-time residents were in China for the holidays-he read the Molena Point Gazette religiously, at least the society column, to get a fix on the planned vacation schedules of the village’s well-to-do residents.

He’d thought of pulling the body out of the car and shoving and rolling it under the bushes, covering it as best he could with dry leaves and dead branches. The bushes were thick there, heavy with shadow. But then he’d changed his mind, in case he might have to move in a hurry-it would take a while to get the ID out of the car, remove the VIN number, and get the plates off.

He’d waited a long time until he thought they’d quit searching. When all seemed quiet, he silently opened the empty garage, folding the old hinged doors aside, and pulled the car inside; he knew there were tools in there.

Shutting the doors without sound, he got to work. He worked nervously, worrying about that kid and if they’d found her, wishing he’d had time to look for her. Maybe she’d be so scared she’d stay hidden, scared of what she’d seen and then of the flashing red lights and dark figures milling around. He imagined her crouched somewhere frozen like a frightened rabbit. Did a rabbit ever die of fear? he thought hopefully.

If they found her, she couldn’t tell them anything-and yet…

He’d better go back. As soon as he took care of the car’s ID. See if the cops had her. Maybe hear where they were taking her-then it would be a cinch, he’d take care of her later, if needed.