Cat Laughing Last

11

In the black attic Dulcie raced among hulking furniture, clawing at cartons, searching for a box that she could move, could shove against the hole to block the raccoons' entrance. In the little square of moonlit sky that marked the vent hole, a black shape loomed, and another was coming fast up the trellis. Her nose was filled with the smells of mildew and dust and ancient mouse droppings, as if all the house dirt of generations had been sucked upward into this dank space. Searching, pulling at heavy boxes, she watched the lead raccoon forcing himself through the little vent, could hear the others behind him pushing up the trellis following the scent of cat.

They daren't shout; the Traynors would hear them-she wondered if Elliott heard the raccoons scrabbling up the wall of the house. She attacked another box, straining with claws and teeth to drag it toward the opening. Where was Joe? Cats weren't built to move heavy loads. If she got a grip with her claws and pulled, she pulled her own back feet out from under herself. When she tried pushing with her shoulder, the box might as well be nailed to the floor. Straining, lying on her back, pulling, she mewled when the box gave suddenly, was shoved so hard it nearly ran her over. She rolled away as it rammed against the wall.

"Push, Dulcie. Push now!" Joe hissed. In the darkness behind the box, his white face and chest gleamed. But as they fought the carton toward the opening, the beast pushed through, forcing the box back in their faces. He was a huge animal; he seemed to fill the attic.

"Run, Kit. Run." The three cats flew through the dark, dodging between the legs of stacked furniture.

"Here," Joe hissed. "Down through the crawl door." He shouldered the kit toward a thick slab of plywood lying askew on the rough flooring, a crack of blackness showing at its edge.

"This?" Dulcie said. "We have to move this?" She pawed uselessly at the slab.

"All together. Hook your claws in the edge."

They hooked into the rough splintery plywood and pulled, lunging backward. The slab moved, and moved again. Behind them, the beasts came swaying and lumbering. Pulling again, they jerked the cover aside far enough to free a six-inch hole. As the masked bandit lunged at them, Joe shoved the kit, and they dropped through into blackness.

They landed on hard linoleum, in a little room walled by shelves that smelled of raisins, brown sugar, cereal. Above them in the hole, a masked face peered down, and another. Trapped in the pantry, they watched the raccoons turn, preparing to back down, watched the first one reach a hind foot to grip the nearest shelf.

Leaping, Joe pawed at the pantry door swinging on the knob and turning it. The door flew open, they were through.

"Get your tail through, Kit."

She flicked her fluffy tail away, and Joe flung himself against the door again, slamming it closed.

They heard the raccoons drop, then a terrible thudding racket as they fought among themselves, scrabbling at the door to force it open. The cats fled, searching the kitchen for a place to hide, listening to the latch rattle as if any minute it would give.

The animals charged the door for some moments, then began, apparently, to vent their rage and hunger on the pantry shelves. Cans and boxes fell clattering, cardboard was torn and ripped to the sounds of munching and slurping-five voracious eating machines heralding their entry into Elliot Traynor's cottage, announcing their arrival with enough noise to wake the village.

The Traynor kitchen, even without lights, was a bright room, its cabinets and tile floor creamy pale, its wide bay window over the sink offering a vista of starlight above the massed houseplants. But its pristine counters afforded no shelter. When a door banged, down the hall, the cats fled behind the refrigerator.

Elliott Traynor came running, Vivi close behind him. Peering out, the cats watched the Traynors pause, staring at the closed pantry door where, within, the raccoons were knocking down cans and thudding against the walls. Elliott was dressed in a velvet robe, pajamas, and slippers-and carrying a black automatic. Crouched behind the refrigerator, Dulcie and the kit hunched close to Joe.

Moving to the pantry, Elliott paused for a long minute, listening. When he jerked the door open, Vivi screamed. Two shots rang. At the booming explosion, the cats scorched down the hall, into the living room and underneath the couch.

"He shot them," Dulcie whispered, shocked. As terrified as she'd been of the raccoons, she was appalled that Traynor had killed them. Crouching in the black dusty dark beneath the couch, she pressed against Joe, shivering. "He might have shot us."

"Shhh." Joe's warning hiss was cut off by Vivi's high, nervous giggle.

"My God! Why did you have to shoot them! Look at the mess you made. What on earth are they, what kind of animal would…?" She giggled again. "Oh, it's gory. What are we going to do?"

"Raccoons," Traynor snapped. "Get some garbage bags."

"You had to load with soft-nose."

"Be glad I did. Bullet could go right through these walls, who knows where. Then there'd be hell to pay. Get me the damn bags. Hope to hell the neighbors thought it was a backfire."

"How did they get in?"

Silence-as if Traynor might be pointing above them, to the crawl hole.

"Well, how did they get in there?"

"How the hell do I know? There are vents in an attic. Get the damn bags."

"You don't need to snap at me."

"I'll snap if I want. And look in the garage for a ladder."

Beneath the couch, Dulcie said, "Maybe our uneasy feeling wasn't so silly. Why would Traynor have a gun?"

"I don't know, Dulcie. Maybe he carries it when he's traveling. Clyde carries a gun in the car when-"

"The Traynors flew out. People aren't supposed to carry guns on planes."

"They can, if they check their bag. And lock it. Unload the gun and declare it. Get a special tag-"

The back door banged. Elliott snapped, "Hold the damn bag open!"

"I don't want to do this! Leave that for the cleaning woman- keep it away from me. This makes me sick."

"Shut up and hold the bag!"

They listened to sounds of scraping, laced with plenty of swearing. Pretty soon they heard the back door open again, then the clanging of metal from the backyard as if Elliott had righted the garbage can that the raccoons had earlier turned over. The idea of a dead animal, even a raccoon, stuffed into a garbage can sickened the cats. They heard Traynor secure the lid and pound it down, as if with an angry fist.

"How many did he kill?" Dulcie said. "There were only two shots. Why didn't we hear the others running away across the attic?"

"Maybe two for one," Joe said coldly. "I hope he closed the door tight."

The kit began to wriggle. Joe scowled at her.

"Curl up, Kit. Close your eyes. We can't leave with them fussing around in the kitchen.

"Come here, Kit," Dulcie said, nudging her. She licked the kit's face and ears, washing her gently until the kit stretched out and dozed off. Dulcie didn't mean to sleep, but she woke later with the kit curled against her and Joe Grey gone.

Listening, she heard not the faintest noise in the house. Leaving the sleeping kit, she crept out from behind the couch and followed Joe's scent down the hall.

No light burned beneath the bedroom door. She could hear Vivi and Elliott breathing, in two separate rhythms. Their human sleep-smell was sour. Beyond the bedroom, Elliott's study was dark, the door pulled nearly closed. Pressing it open, she padded in.

Against the pale color of the drawn draperies, where a thin wash of moonlight brightened the window, Joe sat atop Elliott Traynor's desk, his silhouette black, his white markings gleaming, his ears pricked sharply-he was as still as a sphinx, watching her. The illuminated clock on the desk said 1:30. She leaped up beside him.

A heavy brown folder lay at his feet, from which he had pawed out a thick sheaf of papers, scattering them across the blotter. There was barely enough light to read, even for a cat. She looked at the pages, frowning.

"Traynor's research," he said softly. "Take a look at this. A San Francisco museum owns some of Catalina's letters, which they have translated-pretty impassioned letters," he said, grinning. "She was mad as hell when her father made her marry the American. And look at this."

With a deft claw he pulled out several pages revealing a paper tucked between them, an auction house notice offering two letters written by Catalina Ortega-Diaz, the bidding for each to start at ten thousand dollars. A handwritten notation at the bottom indicated that one had sold for twelve thousand, one for fourteen. Clipped to the notice was a printed statement listing the two items, and making payment to Vivi Traynor.

In the gloom, Joe Grey's eyes were as black as obsidian. "Did someone say there's been no crime? Famous author or not, this is most interesting. There's money here, Dulcie-how many letters did she write over her lifetime? How many did she never send?

"Catalina had seven carved chests that Marcos made for her. Was that white cask one of them? And did they all have secret compartments? Even so, how did she keep her husband from finding them?

"The research said they had separate chambers-bedrooms- where the chests were hidden."

Dulcie looked at the date on the auction notice. "Only a few weeks since these letters were sold. Then Susan Brittain's house is broken into, and the burglar is attacked. Did those men think she had one of the chests? And the same morning, Casselrod snatches the white one."

"Add to that," Joe said, "that Elliott carries a gun and that Vivi and Elliott are afraid of the cops and apparently of Garza's niece." He looked intently at Dulcie, his yellow eyes gleaming with a hot predatory flame-with the same resolve that he had reserved, in the past, for thieves and killers.

"He's a famous author," Dulcie said softly. "He's… Well, I don't know. To accuse a man like that…" Looking around the study, looking at the papers that Joe was neatly pawing together, she shivered. "Prying into Elliott Traynor's business makes me nervous."

"Come on," he said, pawing the envelope open and pushing the papers in. "Get the kit, let's get out of here. I need fresh air, away from these people." Quickly he pushed beneath the draperies and slid the window lock. He had the glass open when Dulcie returned with the yawning kit. And they left the Traynor's with far more silence than they had entered, softly sliding the window closed behind them, as they dropped down among the bushes.

But Joe Grey was back inside the cottage again by the time Charlie got to work. He had watched from the oak tree as Vivi and Elliott left the house, had come in through the window, returning to Elliot's study, his curiosity not nearly satisfied.

He had no idea what else he would find-and no idea that he would catch Charlie snooping, exactly as he and Dulcie had done, hiding her prying with energetic bouts of vacuuming and dusting.