Cat Fear No Evil

18

The five freshly cut oak logs in the fireplace were artfully crisscrossed over the gas jet. Marlin Dorriss, dropping the torn pieces of the notebook on the raised hearth, turned to find a match or, more likely, Joe thought, some sort of mechanical starter. As he reached into a small carved chest that stood at the other end of the hearth, Joe slipped silently behind him.

Closing his teeth on the wadded remains of the notebook he was gone, a gray streak disappearing under the leather love seat. It wasn't the best place to hide but it was the closest. If Dorriss came poking, Joe hoped to slip out at the far end. Once concealed, he carefully spit out the pages so as not to drool on the evidence, and crept to the edge of the love seat where he could see his adversary. He hoped he had all the bits of paper. The notebook cover still lay on the hearth, the slick brown cardboard bent and twisted, victim of Dorriss's rage.

Dorriss turned, reaching for the notebook. He stared at the hearth and searched the carpet and into the fireplace, frowning and puzzled. He stared around the room, then moved swiftly to the dressing room and bath, looking for an intruder. Joe could hear him banging the glass shower door and the closet doors. The next minute he flew into the study then out again and down the hall, Joe heard him swerve into the first bedroom. Not under the bed! Oh please God don't let him look under the bed and find the bills! Cat God, human God, I don't care. This is a bona fide feline supplication. Please, please, please don't let him look under that bed.

But why would he look there? The guest beds sat low to the floor. The frames that held the box springs were no more than six inches high, not enough space for a burglar to hide-at least, not for the kind of burglar Dorriss would have in mind. Joe heard the closet in that room slide open, then Dorriss was in the hall again searching the other bedrooms, banging open closet doors. Immediately Joe fled for the guest room and under the bed.

Fighting open the metal clasp, he shoved the notebook pages in. Laboriously, with an impatient paw, he managed to fasten the flap again. Next time around, he'd like to have opposing thumbs. Down the hall, Dorriss was making more and more noise, searching, then pounding down the stairs apparently to search the rest of the house-but he'd be back. Slipping out from under the bed, leaving his burden for the moment, Joe scrambled up to the sill.

There was no breath of air behind the closed shutters; no window was open. Balanced on the sill, he challenged a shutter's latch with frantic claws. But when he'd fought it open, the window behind it was not only closed, but locked. From the stairs, he heard Dorriss coming.

The lock was a paw-bruiser, invented by designers who had no respect for feline needs. He heard Dorriss turn into the study, heard him opening the desk drawers-maybe wondering what else the thief might have taken. Joe's paws began to sweat, slipping on the metal lock-and he began to wonder.

If, as unlikely as it seemed, the downstairs glass door had been left open for one black tomcat, if against all odds the opportunistic Azrael had somehow partnered up with Marlin Dorriss, Dorriss might well be knowledgeable enough to be looking for more than a human thief. Frantic, Joe could hear him shuffling papers.

By the time he got the lock open and slid the glass back, he was a bundle of nerves, and his paw felt fractured. Dragging the heavy brown envelope up to the sill, he balanced it against the glass. As he pulled the shutter closed behind him, he heard Dorriss coming out of the study, heard Dorriss pause at the door as if looking in. Joe wondered if his gray fur made a dark smear behind the closed white louvers? Or if the shutter humped out of line where he crouched? He wondered if cats were subject to sudden coronary occlusion? He was ready to leap out into space clutching the envelope, calculating how best to negotiate the twisting angles to the lower roof, when the phone rang.

Thank you, great cat god or whoever.

Dorriss let it ring twice, but then he crossed the hall to answer. Joe knew he should jump at once, but for an instant he remained still, listening.

"I can't talk now," Dorriss was saying, "there's someone in the house." Joe heard a sharp metallic snap, as when a bullet is jacked into the chamber of an automatic.

"I can't talk now. You're where?"

Pause. Against all good sense, Joe remained listening, gripping the envelope in his teeth.

"What the hell are you doing there? What the hell made you take off? Call me back, I can't talk.'"

Silence, then an intake of breath. Then, "You're telling me the truth?"

Pause. Then, "All right, get on with it. That's very nice indeed. Then you need to get back here. I told you not to play these games with your little friends. They've made a mess, and you'll have to clean it up. I don't want any more of your childish pranks, I can't afford to deal with that stupidity, and I won't have it rubbing off on me. Get back here fast, my dear, and take care of this."

A soft click as Dorriss hung up. Joe crouched on the sill, his teeth dug into the envelope, adjusting his weight-and-trajectory ratio, eyeing a lower roof. With the extra baggage, if he missed his mark he'd drop like a rock, two stories to the stone terrace.

But he didn't want to toss the envelope, let it fall and maybe split open, spill the evidence all over Dorriss's front yard, to be snatched and sucked away in the sea wind.

He took a deep breath and was airborne-airborne but falling heavily, his usual buoyancy gone. His ability to twist in the air had deserted him. He felt like a rock, a flung boulder. Falling, he was falling…

He landed on the little roof scrabbling with frantic claws, five feet to the left of the window and five feet below, coming down with a thud that shook him clear to his ears.

But he was all in one piece and, more to the point, so was the envelope. He was poised to jump again when a sound to his right stopped him. Made his blood turn to ice, made him search the low roofs.

A dark little gargoyle stared up at him. Crouched on the edge of the tiles, Kit watched him wide eyed, but then stared suddenly past him at the window above, at the sill he had just abandoned. Her voice was a terrified hiss. "Jump, Joe! He's coming! Jump! He's opening the shutters! Jump now! Drop that thing and jump!"

Earlier that morning, the kit had seen Joe Grey heading for the police department as she prowled the roofs alone thinking about Lucinda and Pedric, mourning them, deeply missing them. Wandering the peaks and shingles feeling flat and sad, she had seen Joe Grey below, galloping up the sidewalk, headed somewhere in a hurry. Coming down, she had followed him and when he galloped through the courthouse gardens, of course she had followed. But then he turned and saw her, and instead of his usual friendly ear twitch, inviting her to join him, he'd given her a hiss, a leave-me-alone snarl, and had cruelly sent her away again. Or he thought he had.

Slinking away through the bushes hurt and angry, she had turned when he wasn't looking, and followed him to the front door of the PD. Had watched him slip inside on the heels of the judge's secretary. The tall blonde, delivering a sheaf of papers, took no notice of the gray tomcat padding in behind her. The kit wanted to follow, but he'd been so cross she daren't. And then only a minute later a delivery boy hurried up the street carrying a big white bag of takeout that smelled of pastrami and made her lick her whiskers, and she had watched the dispatcher buzz the boy through.

Joe Grey had gone in there to share the captain's lunch and had sent her away alone. Feeling incredibly hurt and sad, and mad too-all claws and hisses-she didn't even want to beg lunch by charming some likely tourist in one of the sidewalk cafes as she so often did. She felt totally alone and abandoned. She had no one. Lucinda and Pedric were gone forever. And this morning, Dulcie had rudely slipped off without her. And now Joe Grey didn't want her. How cruelly he had driven her away.

All alone, with no one to care about her, she climbed to the roof of the PD and hunched down in the oak tree. There she waited for nearly an hour angry and lonely, until Joe Grey came out again. But then, leaving the station, he was not licking his whiskers, he did not look happily fed. He looked so gaunt and hungry himself that that made her feel better. Much better.

She watched him crouch in the geraniums drinking hungrily from an automatic bubbler that watered the courthouse gardens, then he took off fast, heading across the village. The kit followed. Joe was so interested in wherever he was going that he paid no attention now to who might be behind him. He was all hustle, dodging people's feet and up trees and across roofs, his ears pricked, his stub tail straight out behind. She trailed him five blocks to Ocean and across Ocean among the feet of tourists and on again to the fine big house that looked like a museum from the front and was all glass at the back.

Sneaking low and carefully the kit had followed him around the side of the house and saw him go in through an open glass door. Hiding in the shadowy bushes that grew among the boulders, she watched him enter that big house through an open slider. Was that door open for him} He sniffed the door, then went right on in, as bold as if he lived there. When he had gone inside she pressed her nose against the door, looking.

Joe had disappeared. She peered into the room, then she followed her nose. Joe's scent led across the huge big room that had brightly colored caves all around, all elegantly furnished, so many places to play and to hide. She investigated one fascinating niche then another, rubbing and rolling, racing across the backs of the couches and trying her claws in the brocade. Sniffing leather and velvet, exploring every single object in every single room, she never did find Joe Grey. At last she approached the stairs.

But looking up that broad, angled flight, the kit stopped and backed away. What was up there? Joe had been up there a long time. What was he doing? She had heard no sound, no thump of paws, and she was frightened. She was standing undecided, looking up, when she heard a car park out in front, heard the car door open and close, then a man's footsteps on the stone terrace. Quick she hid behind the closest chair, crouching against the thick, soft velvet.

The kit knew Marlin Dorriss. Didn't everyone in the village know him? He was a philanthropist, whatever that meant, and a womanizer. She knew what that word meant. Wilma said he was usually circumspect in his personal life and that meant quiet and careful like a hunting cat. Except he wasn't circumspect about Helen Thurwell. Marlin Dorriss was tall and slim, with a lovely tan, beautiful deep brown eyes, and short-clipped white hair. Handsome, and kind looking.

But as he crossed the big room and headed up the stairs where Joe Grey had gone, she felt afraid.

She couldn't race up the stairs past him to warn Joe. But she could slip out, and around to the front, and maybe, if she could gain the angled roofs and ledges, she could get inside.

Scooting through the bushes to the front of the house she clawed and scrabbled her way up bits of wall and across slabs of roof, looking above her for an open window-and then suddenly above her, a window slid open.

And there was Joe Grey. She saw his white paw slide the glass back, saw him press between the glass and the shutter with a huge packet in his mouth. He remained so for some time, staring back into the room. Then he crouched as if someone was coming and leaped into space twisting to land on a roof below. Above him, Marlin Dorriss appeared; she could see him at the next window. She choked back a cry. Joe stared down at her.

"Jump," she hissed. "He's coming! Jump! He's opening the shutters! Jump now! Drop that thing and jump!"

Then everything happened at once. Dorriss closed the shutters and turned away, and Joe leaped to the next angle with the brown paper bundle, then leaped again to the concrete. The bundle split open just at the edge of the bushes. In the wind, papers began to flap and dance. Kit had never seen Joe move so fast. Grabbing a mouthful of papers he pulled the package under the bushes and was back again snatching up more. The kit leaped.

And she was beside him snatching pieces of torn paper from the wind. Had Dorriss turned back? Was he looking? Had he seen the package fall before Joe snatched it away? The kit could not see Dorriss now, his silhouette was gone from the window-but then there he was standing at another window looking out.

Surely he couldn't see them beneath the bushes. Had they caught all the papers? Like catching swooping birds from the rooftop. The kit stared at the papers under her paws. "What is all this?"

"Evidence," Joe said, pushing little bits of paper back into the torn envelope, trying to fold it around the ragged mess. Kit helped him stuff papers in. Pressing the envelope into folds with their paws they gripped it between them, their teeth piercing the heavy paper as they tried to hold it together. And when Dorriss turned away, when the windows were clear once more, they dragged it out from the bushes and away.

Keeping to the shadows along the sidewalk, they tried to shelter their burden from the wind. It was a long way to Joe's house, and already the package was heavy. Trying to find a rhythm together, falling into an unwieldy pace, eight paws attempting to move in harmony, they hauled their burden through an empty alley and along the less-frequented backstreets. Kit's head was filled with questions which, with her mouth full, she couldn't ask.

The envelope grew heavier with every step. The wind died as they left the shore, and that helped. But the day grew muggy hot. Kit wanted to stop and rest but Joe didn't pause, pushing on from shadow to shadow and from bush to bush. When a human appeared far down the street they dragged their burden under a porch or behind a fence.

It seemed to take hours to cover those long blocks. When at last they neared Joe's house, the kit's entire being cried out for water, food, and a nap. A pair of tourists wandered past, and they slipped deeper among the bushes where they rested a moment, panting. Peering out at the house, the kit so longed to be inside, so longed for a drink of cool water.

The Damen house looked not at all as it once had. When Kit first came there as a young cat, the house was a white cottage with only one story, what Wilma called a Cape Cod. Now with its new facade of heavy Mexican timbers and plastered walls, it was truly elegant. And the best part was Joe's tower high atop the new upstairs. Kit loved Joe's cat-size house with a view of the village rooftops-it was a cozy bit of cat heaven.

Lucinda and Pedric had planned to build a tower just like it. Atop their own new house. "You will have a tower," Lucinda had said. "A fine tall cat tower looking out at all the world just like Joe Grey's tower."

Now Lucinda and Pedric would never build their dream home.

The kit would give all the towers in all the world to have them back. A tear slid down, spotting the brown envelope and its papers as they hauled their unwieldy burden through Joe Grey's cat door.

Pulling the package through, the papers catching on the door, they dropped it on the African throw rug and lay beside it.

"Heavy as a dead raccoon," Joe said. "Thank you, Kit. I guess you saved the day."

"What did we save? What are those papers?"

Joe Grey smiled. "With luck, this could be the claw that snags the big one. A killing bite to the slickest burglar this village has ever seen." He glanced toward the front door, listening. But the car he'd heard went on by. You never knew when Clyde might bring company, Max Harper or Dallas Garza or Ryan Flannery. "Come on, let's get it upstairs before someone walks in."

Dragging the envelope between them, they hauled it up the new stairway that had been built in half of the old guest room. The other half of that room was now a walk-in closet where Clyde kept all manner of oddments, from unused parts for his weight-lifting equipment to stacks of outdated automotive catalogs. At the top of the steps, in the new master bedroom, they dragged their burden across the new carpet to Clyde's study.

Hauling it up onto Clyde's desk, Joe pawed the papers out and carefully separated the various bills from the torn pages of the notebook. Fetching a rubber band from a box on the desk, he managed to secure the small bits of torn evidence. Watching him, Kit retrieved another rubber band, but he made her put it back. "Don't chew that, Kit. It could kill you."

"That little thing? How could it?"

"Just like string, Kit. You know about string. The barbs of your tongue hold it back, you can't spit it out, it gets wrapped around the base of your tongue, you swallow the rest and you're in trouble."

She spit out the rubber band. She'd been told more than once about string, that if she should ever swallow a string not to pull it out with her paw, that she could cut her insides doing that. Joe studied the stack of bills. Who knew which were of value? No one would know until they were compared with the dates of the burglaries. Even then, there would be a lot of play in the machinery. The Tyler family in Ventura, for instance, had opened their safe in January and not again until October when they found the antique diamond necklace missing; the burglary could have happened anytime in those nine months. The Von Cleavers, in Montecito, were in Europe for five weeks. Got back to find a glass cabinet broken into and a silver pitcher missing, a museum piece signed by a famous craftsman from the 1600s, but nothing else was gone. Each burglary was the same, the rarest and most expensive item lifted, nothing else touched. Marlin Dorriss himself had been at his Florida condo when his favorite Diebenkorn painting vanished from his Molena Point house-if it vanished, if that was not a red herring.

But what kind of thief took only one piece and left a houseful of treasures?

Joe Grey smiled. Someone out for the thrills, for the rarity or historical value of the items stolen, someone who didn't need the money. Who got all the money he wanted in other ways?

Impatient with the lack of solid answers to what he suspected, impatient for darkness so he could deliver the evidence to the law, Joe restlessly prowled the study.

But the kit had curled up in a corner of the love seat with her nose tucked under her paw, so sad and withdrawn that Joe paused, watching her. He stood worrying over her when a click from above made him stiffen.

The rooftop cat door made a slap, and Dulcie popped out of the hole in the ceiling, dropping daintily to the rafter beneath. Perched on the high, dark beam, she peered down at him-and her green eyes widened.

"You got the bills!" She dropped to the desk beside him with a delicate thud. "Tell me! Tell me how you did it. Dorriss didn't see you? Why are you frowning?"

He glanced across to the love seat. She turned to look at the kit.

"So sad, Dulcie. She keeps falling back into sadness."

Leaping to the love seat Dulcie nosed at the kit and washed her tortoiseshell face, washed her ears, nudged and loved her until at last the kit looked up and tried to smile. When the tattercoat had snuggled against Dulcie, Joe said, "Kit saved me from a bad trip, she warned me just in time." He gave her a brief replay that made Dulcie shiver and laugh, then he asked, "What did you find at Consuela's?"

"The cottage was locked. I tried everything. Finally balanced on the branch of an oak tree and clawed through a roof vent, in through a filthy attic and down through the crawl space. Had to claw away the plywood cover like we did when those raccoons chased us." She sneezed. "All dust and cobwebs. I got the plywood aside and slipped down on the closet shelf.

"Closet was empty, just some empty hangers. But the door was open. I looked out into the room, ready to hit the attic again and vanish. That cottage is just one big room, like a studio apartment. No one was there, nada. I searched the whole place. Found exactly nothing. Checked the dinky bath and kitchen, fought open every cupboard and drawer. Not one stolen garment. Not much of anything else except mouse droppings. It's just a crummy rental, no better than where a homeless would crash.

"I was so mad that I'd wasted my time. I could have been hunting, or could have been tossing Dorriss's place with you- could have been prowling the village with Kit," she said gently, glancing down at the tattercoat. "I was about to storm out when someone opened the garage door. Shook the whole house, rumbling up. I crouched, ready to leap back to the attic. The garage door closed again, and something metal clanged in there. When the door between the garage and the house opened, I whipped around and dove under the couch.

"I could hear them giggling before I got a look, Dillon and her two schoolmates. Consuela wasn't with them. They got some soft drinks from the fridge, some chips from the cupboard that the mice hadn't been at, and they began to drag in clothes-from their car, I thought then. New clothes, Joe. Beautiful clothes. Leather. Cashmere. Silk. Piling them on the couch and daybed and chairs.

"They pushed the closet door wide open-it has a mirror on the inside-and they began trying on clothes and giggling, vamping, hamming it up. All the clothes had tags, tags hanging down from the couch in my face, every one from Alice's Mirror.

"The blond girl, Candy, said they shouldn't take anything, the cops would recognize whatever they wore. Leah, the tall one, said that was stupid, how would the cops be able to tell. It ended up, Leah and Candy each took a couple of leather jackets and some sweaters. Dillon didn't take anything. She tried on clothes but put them down again. They talked about another job tonight, only to do it really early, just after the stores close. A different MO, Candy said, to throw the cops off. What a dim brain. She thinks the law won't expect another job so soon, won't be watching."

"Did they say what store?"

Dulcie sighed. "The Sport Shop. But… I really don't want to…"

"Dulcie, it doesn't do Dillon any good to get away with this stuff. She's going to be in trouble sooner or later. Better she gets it over with, before it's something worse."

"I suppose. But there's more. I saw more." She rose and began to pace. From the love seat, the kit watched her quietly.

"I followed them into the garage and slipped under a workbench, watched them hang the clothes in metal lockers. That's the clanging I heard. They snapped a padlock on the locker and left. Five were already locked, Joe. They filled and locked four more. I didn't see if they had a car out front. Leah used the garage opener to get out, I saw her drop it in her pocket as the door came down behind them.

"When they'd left, I bumped against the lockers. Leaped and thumped at them. None sounded hollow, they all sounded dull, crammed full."

Joe was quiet. Then, "Do you want to call the station? Or shall I?"

She sneezed. "The whole scene makes me sick." Resignedly she moved to the phone, hit the speaker button, and pawed in the number of the station. And reluctantly she did the deed. When she had finished telling the dispatcher what she knew, she stretched out on the desk blotter next to the torn papers and ragged brown envelope, looking very sad.

"It's best," Joe said, his ears down, the white strip on his nose creased into a frown.

Dulcie studied the pile of bills and the torn pages. "It's all right for you to talk. You didn't betray a friend."