Cat Fear No Evil

12

Kate stood at the kitchen window waiting for her kettle to boil, looking out at the darkly striated cloud layer that was moving above the city rooftops, taking a moment to calm herself. She was still all nerves and anger. The hurried drive to reach the city before Consuela did, and rushing to her safe deposit box… The sense of invasion knowing that Consuela had her key had left her shaky with nerves and anger. And she felt watched again, too, as she had at Wilma's house.

But Consuela wouldn't have the nerve to follow her home. Surely the woman would think she'd be ready to call the police, or already had called them.

Through the trails of gray cloud the late-afternoon sun threw vivid glances of light onto the flat roofs, reflections so sharp they blurred Coit Tower and obscured her view of the Oakland hills. Selecting an English Breakfast tea bag, she poured the boiling water into her cup and, letting it steep, took the cup to the bedroom to sip while she unpacked her small bag.

An hour earlier, returning to San Francisco, she had headed straight for the design studio. Parking in her marked slot, she didn't go upstairs to her office but hurried around the corner to the branch where she did her banking, praying she wasn't too late. Having borrowed Wilma's duplicate safe deposit box key, she had given it to the teller and signed in. She had shared her box with Wilma ever since she opened it, when she'd left Molena Point three years ago. Having no living relatives that she knew of, she had wanted someone to be able to take care of business if she were in an accident, if something unforeseen happened.

Following the overweight, pale-haired teller through the formidable iron gate of the vault, impatiently waiting for her to wield the pair of keys, she had pulled out the metal box, nearly collapsing with relief when she saw the thick brown envelope in which she kept her important papers and the small square cardboard carton that held the jewelry. Stripping the safe deposit drawer of its contents, dropping the box and papers in a leather carryall, she had debated about reporting that an imposter might try to open her box.

But there was nothing in it now for Consuela to steal. With the time and fuss such a report would take, she had decided not to do it. Surely the bank manager would be summoned, forms would have to be filled out, the police brought into the matter. The rest of the day would be shot when she had other things to do. Leaving the box empty, she had settled for the smug satisfaction that she had arrived before Consuela.

As she left the bank she had scanned the parking garage for Consuela's blue Corvette, or for anyone who might be watching her as she hurried up the three interior flights to the design studio and her own office.

The lights were on in several offices but she saw no one.

Shutting her office door behind her, she slit the tape that sealed the little cardboard box to make sure the jewelry was still inside. Fingering the lovely, ornate pieces, she had longed to keep them out in the light where they could be admired, longed to wear and enjoy them. But at last she put them back and sealed them up again.

Opening the bottom drawer of her fireproof file, she tucked the little box at the back and locked the drawer. Not the safest place, but better than any SD box, if that woman was able to copy her signature. She really didn't understand what this was all about, when the jewelry was paste. The whole matter made her feel so invaded and helpless. Was nothing secure anymore? Leaving the office and hurrying home, she had wanted only to tuck up safe in her apartment and shut out the world.

Kate's apartment building was a stark, ancient structure with two units upstairs and three down, and a parking garage underneath, a tan stucco box so old that one wanted to sign a long-term lease hoping the landlord would be forced to honor it, would not give in to the sudden urge to level the building and go for a high-rise. Kate's apartment was reached by a concrete stairwell that held smells she did not like to think about. The apartments themselves, though, were in prime shape, freshly painted and with new carpet. The large windows opened without sticking, the kitchen appliances were new, with granite countertops gracing the pale pickled cabinets.

Opening up her hot, close apartment, she had sorted through four days' worth of mail and made a quick trip to the corner Chinese market for milk, eggs, some vegetables, and frozen dinners. She planned to spend the rest of the week wrapping up two interior design jobs and doing the preliminary house call for a couple who were moving out from the East Coast. That job, which she had committed to some weeks ago, was the last new work she meant to take. The Ealders had bought a lovely town house facing Golden Gate Park, and she was looking forward to that small but interesting installation.

She had been approached by two other prospective clients but had turned both over to other designers. She could take on nothing new. She wanted, when she left the San Francisco firm in March, to have all her work completed. She expected she would move back to the village. She had been offered an enticing position as head designer, if she would move to the firm's new Seattle office; but that was so far from her friends.

In Molena Point, she had given Charlie a deposit on the duplex apartment and had made arrangements to start work for Hanni the first of March. That gave her four months to finish with all her clients. She didn't want to hand over any last-minute items to her successor.

During the next busy months she would have little time for personal concerns, little time to follow the confusing leads to her family; and maybe that was just as well. Anyway, the most pressing matter at the moment was to clear her desk and calendar before Lucinda and Pedric arrived-and hope that whoever had followed her was gone, and that Consuela returned to Molena Point, out of her sight. She wondered if Lucinda and Pedric could shed some light on the jewelry, on its age and background. The fact that Lucinda had bought similar pieces in that small shop up the coast invited all manner of speculation.

Russian River was just a tiny vacation village, but it had a colorful past filled with strange stories from the Gold Rush. So many immigrants had ended up there, panning for placer gold or working the mines, people from dozens of countries and divergent cultures. She wanted to go up there later in the year if she had time, dig around and see what she could learn.

She chose her clothes for work the next morning, then straightened the apartment, picking up papers she'd left scattered and doing a little dusting. The cool serenity of the cream and beige rooms welcomed and calmed her, the simple white linen couch and chair and loveseat, her books and framed prints. She had brought nothing with her from the Molena Point house when she left Jimmie, had wanted nothing from that old life that had gone so sour, not a stick of the furniture she had taken such care to select. She'd had an estate dealer sell it all, the Baughman pieces, the handmade rugs, everything that had at one time meant so much to her.

She had wondered if Jimmie would like her to ship the furnishings up to San Quentin, for his new residence. If a convict had free access to large-screen cable TV and the latest computers, if he could make and receive all the phone calls he pleased, and could, in the prison library, study for a law degree with which later to sue the prison authorities, if he could place bets on the horses and professional sports and buy lottery tickets, maybe he'd like to customize his cell, redesign his personal environment in keeping with his new mode of living.

Clyde would say she was bitter.

Clyde would be right.

Filling her briefcase with the needed papers and work schedules for Tuesday, and setting aside a stack of sample books, she moved about the apartment with an increasingly uneasy sense of being watched again, even in her own rooms. Oh, she didn't want that to start, that awful fear that had stopped her from taking the cable car or walking to work, that had made her cling to the comparative safety of her own locked vehicle whenever she left a building.

Finishing her housekeeping chores she fetched a favorite Loren Eiseley, a copy in which she had carefully marked the passages she loved most, and she curled up on the couch under a quilt.

But she couldn't concentrate for long; she kept looking up from the pages toward the kitchen where the north window was open to the breeze.

Of course there could be no one there, she was on the second floor.

Except, the roofs were flat out there and, she supposed, easy enough to access if one knew where the fire escape or maintenance stairs were located.

Rising, she closed and locked the window, then got back under her quilt holding the book unopened, listening.

And later when she checked the window before she went to bed, the lock was not engaged. The closed window slid right open, though she was sure she'd locked it. She locked it now, testing it to make sure-it was not a very substantial device, just one of those little slide clips that sometimes didn't catch, that she would have to press hard with her fingers while she slammed the window, to make it take hold properly.

That night she did not sleep well. And every night for a week, arriving home after dark, she checked the kitchen window first thing. It was always locked. But then on Friday evening, she discovered that her extra set of house and car keys, which she kept in her jewelry box, was missing.

She looked in the locked file drawer in her home office where she sometimes hid the extra keys and extra cash. The cash was there, but not the keys. She looked in the pockets of her suitcase-where that black tomcat had been poking around, hooking out her safe deposit key.

The pockets were all empty.

Well, she'd misplaced her extra keys before, and later they'd turned up. Only this time the loss frightened her. She felt chilled again, and uncertain

But what was Consuela going to do, let herself into the apartment and bludgeon her? How silly. Bone tired from the week's intense work and late hours, but more than satisfied with the Ranscioni house, she gave up the search. The keys were somewhere. No one had been inside the apartment. If they didn't turn up, she'd change the lock. Making herself a drink, she slipped out of her suit and heels and into a robe, thinking about the Ranscioni job.

The buffet installation and fireplace mantel and new interior doors were perfect. She was more than happy with the work the painters were doing. The furniture had been delivered on time, and today the draperies had been hung, right on schedule. Tomorrow, Saturday, she'd place the accessories herself. She did so enjoy doing the last details on a house by herself, wandering the rooms alone for a leisurely look at the finished product, uninterrupted even by her clients; a little moment to herself, to enjoy and assess what she had created.

A young woman, Nancy Westervelt, had come in just this morning wanting her to take an interesting small job. Kate had regretfully turned her down. The woman-handsome, dark-haired, and quiet-had wanted Kate to incorporate her South American furniture and art into a contemporary setting. Nancy was mannerly and soft-spoken and, given that their tastes were so similar, would have been fun to work with.

She had thought a lot that week about the safe deposit box incident. She had paid close attention to her office file drawer, often checking to see that the cardboard box was there in the bottom drawer at the back, and that the tape hadn't been disturbed. She had gone back to her safe deposit box twice to see if Consuela had returned. After that once, just after she'd cleared the box herself, the girl had not been back. But the presence of that frowzy, thieving girl there in the city, presuming she was still there, bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

She had not glimpsed the man who had followed her before she left the city, and that was a plus, although she had not found her spare house and car keys yet. And then on Saturday morning, leaving the Ranscioni house, coming up the stairs with her grocery bags she opened the door-and paused, feeling cold. That prickly sensation as if her hair wanted to stand up. Had she heard a small, scraping sound? Had she felt some unnatural movement of air against her face?

She stood for a long moment trying to identify what was disturbing her, what held her so rigid and still. She sniffed for some strange scent, a hint of cologne perhaps. She listened for the faintest brushing, the tiniest shifting of weight on the wooden floors.

Silence.

But someone was there, she could feel the difference on her crawling skin. The way she had felt in Wilma's house that morning when she had paused in the dining room, certain that someone was present.

Setting down her groceries on the hall table, she snatched the vial of pepper spray from her purse and walked slowly through the apartment opening each door, pushing back the two shower curtains, checking the window locks and looking in the closets. She even opened the wall bed in her office.

There was no one; the rooms were empty, the windows locked as she had left them. Quickly she put away her groceries, all the while listening.

Returning to her study where she'd left the wall bed down, she opened a package of new white sheets and made it up, although Lucinda and Pedric wouldn't arrive until Sunday evening. Covering the taut sheets with a thick, flowered quilt, she cleared off her oversize wicker desk, stashing papers and samples in her bedroom. She always brought work home, room layouts, catalogs and price lists, and the heavy books of fabric and carpet samples.

In the living room she cleared away the week's newspapers that she'd hardly had time to look at, then tossed the pillows from the window seat into the dryer for a good freshening. A few short, dark hairs clung to one of the pillows.

A friend had brought her poodle over a few weeks ago, a small black toy that had snuggled on the window seat. She hadn't thought that poodles could shed, but maybe she was wrong. She removed the hairs with a damp sponge and tossed the pillow in with the others.

On her way to the trash with the papers, an article caught her attention. Pulling that section out to read later, she laid it on the kitchen counter-something about a jewel robbery. Shoving the rest of the papers in the trash and straightening up the kitchen, she thought how good it would be to see Lucinda and Pedric.

How excited the old couple had been, planning their tour through the Cat Museum's gardens and galleries. Picking up the phone, she made lunch reservations for Monday at an elegant Chinese restaurant near the museum, a small place that she thought would please them. She was so looking forward to their visit, this elderly couple with their twinkling eyes and dry wit, this pair of eighty-year-old newlyweds with their Old-World knowledge about cats that made her want to know them better. And she had to smile. How thrilled the kit was that the Greenlaws would soon return to the village to stay. Lucinda and Pedric were the kit's true family, and now at last she would have a home with them, in a brand-new house atop Hellhag Hill.

The cave within the hill that frightened Joe Grey seemed not to have dampened the resolve of the Greenlaws to live there. They connected that dark fissure in some way to the ancient Celtic tales they collected, to the myths that had been handed down from their ancestors. The day after they were married they had bought the entire hill, some twenty acres.

Kate had, when she first saw the cave, been as intrigued as the kit, wanting to go down into it. But then she had grown frightened, and had ended up leaving quickly. On later visits to the village she had stayed away from that part of the hills.

When she had the apartment in order for the Greenlaws, she made a cup of tea, then pulled on a warm sweater over her jeans and walked up Russian Hill to the Cat Museum, wanting one more look at her grandfather's diaries. Maybe to winnow out some overlooked clue to her heritage. The afternoon was cool and sunny, with a brilliance one could find, she thought, only in San Francisco, the sky a clear deep blue behind a scattering of fast-running white clouds. When she looked down the hill behind her, the shadows of the crowded buildings angled crisply across the pale sidewalks; the dark bay was scattered with whitecaps, the bridges glinting with afternoon sun. The breeze off the bay tugged at her like a live thing. She kept thinking about the dark hairs on the cushion of her window seat; she had found, when she cleaned out the lint catcher of the dryer, a wad of straight, black hairs, not really like poodle hairs.

Had Consuela brought that cat to the city? Joe Grey had said only that Azrael had been the instigator of the bizarre effort-the dismally failed effort, she thought with satisfaction. Why would Consuela have brought the cat here?

Entering the wrought-iron gates of the Cat Museum, she stepped into a world that seemed totally removed from the city. Between the various gallery buildings, its gardens were as lush and mysterious as the secret garden of her favorite childhood book. The cats who lived there watched her from where they sunned themselves lying on the low walls or atop various pieces of cat sculpture. Today, she did not linger in the gardens, but went directly to the desk to sign out McCabe's diaries.

She spent several hours in the reading room but found nothing she'd missed before. From his early years as a stevedore, then as a building contractor and newspaper columnist, through his marriage, to the weeks just before the earthquake in which he died, he had written what he observed of the city but offered no fact about himself. Kate could not even find his wife's name. Several entries mentioned their baby girl, but nowhere did McCabe write her name. Had he had some superstition, some objection to setting down the names of those close to him? Or had there been deletions in the journals, pages removed? With such short entries, that might be easy to do, and sometimes the flow did seem disjointed. The passages to which she kept returning were vague: McCabe's occasional offhand mentions of the other place, or those grim kingdoms, and one day till I make that journey? These, and mentions of not liking to be shut in, not liking a low, heavy sky-and of dreams that disturbed him in the small hours when he prowled sleepless.

But those were dreams, perhaps nightmares. Not facts about his life. I dreamed last night of a granite sky lit by a green haze … I have dreamed of caverns falling, and of the echoing cries of beasts in a world I have never seen…

Kate left the museum frightened. She must give up the search. Whatever lay in the tangle of her heritage was not for her, she had learned nothing about her parents and she was only upsetting herself.

Arriving home, she meant to put on her robe, fix herself a drink, have a light supper, and tuck up on the couch with a book. When she turned into the kitchen, the newspaper she had left on the counter had slid to the floor. She picked it up, puzzled.

A stain of grease darkened the article that had interested her, grease smeared across the account of a downtown jewel robbery. Frowning, she wiped the counter more thoroughly where she had earlier prepared some chicken, and wiped the paper as best she could.

The robbery had occurred ten days ago as the owner was locking up to go home. When he stepped outside and turned to lock the door, two men pinned him against the building demanding to be let in. He grabbed one of them, and there was a fight. Apparently someone, perhaps a neighbor, called the police. The store owner, James Ruse, said it was just seconds until he heard sirens. He told reporters that as the cops belted out of their car, grabbing one man, the other seemed to go insane, jumping on Ruse and beating him. Ruse grabbed the brick he used to prop open the door on hot days and hit the man hard in the head. That didn't stop the burglar; he beat Ruse again, injured one of the cops, and escaped. Police captain Norville said it was likely the man was on drugs, that he had been almost impossible to subdue.

The article unnerved her, the city was getting so violent. She didn't understand why the police didn't shoot the man, when he had almost killed an innocent shopkeeper, had been trying to kill him. She didn't turn on the kitchen TV for the news as she usually did when she fixed her dinner, but put on a CD while she made her salad.

When she went to the refrigerator for the bowl of chicken, she saw that it was empty.

Someone had been here. Had eaten the chicken, apparently while reading the newspaper.

Quietly she reached for the phone, meaning to dial 911, then to leave, to wait for the police on the street or in her locked car. She had started to phone when she saw the paw prints.

Greasy paw prints on the stove, catching the light when she stood at an angle. And when she examined the back of the newspaper, there were greasy prints there, as well.

Checking all the window locks, she angrily searched her apartment, looking in every tiniest niche, under every piece of furniture. In the living room she found the cat's black hair matted on her white couch: a stark and insolent greeting. She imagined the huge black creature riding in the car beside Consuela, peering coldly out the front window-laying what kind of plans?

Because they had missed stealing the jewelry, he had come here into her apartment, had very likely searched the entire apartment looking for it. What next? Her office? And where had he been when Consuela entered the bank? Riding on her shoulder snarling at the tellers? Following her on a leash like some pet jungle cat, commanding irate or amused stares from tellers and customers? Although most likely he had kept out of sight.

If he had jimmied her window, he had probably let Consuela in through the front door, and Consuela had taken her extra keys. They had most likely locked the window and locked the door behind them when they left; and now they could enter at their pleasure.

Searching again, she could find nothing else disturbed. Whatever they had done in here, that black beast frightened her far more than that little snip Consuela could ever do.

Well, she couldn't tell the cops that a cat had broken in, and she had no evidence that any human had been in here. Unplugging and removing her kitchen phone, and then her office extension, so that neither phone could be taken off the hook, she carried them into the bedroom, setting them down beside the nightstand where she left the third phone plugged in. Locking the bedroom door behind her, she checked every small hiding place once again, behind the boxes on the closet shelf, behind her clothes. She was thankful she'd had the bedroom lock installed; it gave her a sense of security after she'd been followed. She didn't like surprises; she would not want to wake with someone in her room.

Certain that the cat was not in the room with her, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She was tucked up in bed, reading, by 8:15, the dark winter evening shut away beyond the draperies-wanting to lose herself in a favorite book as she had done when she was a child in one foster home or another.

But, again, the book didn't hold her. Putting out the light, turning over clutching her pillow, she wanted to sleep and didn't think she could. Then when she did sleep, her dreams were filled with Azrael, and with phantom worlds that beckoned to her from the darkness. She woke at three and lay sleepless until dawn, her mind racing with unwanted questions.