Cat Laughing Last

19

Fog softened the lines of the long, two-story building, the milky dawn seeming almost to have absorbed its pale walls. The structure was, in fact, two buildings, with a narrow walkway between. The first floors housed various small businesses, including a cell phone repair shop, and an upholsterer. Offices and apartments occupied the second floor. Of the seven cars parked diagonally at the curb before the Pumpkin Coach Charity Shop, four were frosted with water drops as if they had stood there all night. Cora Lee French's green '92 Chevy was dry and faintly dusty, and the engine and hood were still warm. The driver's door stood open, the keys in the ignition. Cora Lee's purse lay on the seat.

The Pumpkin Coach was a favorite village institution, staffed by volunteers who arranged and sold the used books and furniture and clothes that were donated, the paintings and tableware and office equipment and children's toys and every kind of bric-a-brac from Chinese cloisonne and old pewter to Mexican glassware, all gifts from upscale Molena Point households that were moving or changing decor. The shop's annual income, more than $200,000, was given in total to Molena Point charities-the boys and girls clubs, the Scouts, County Animal Shelter, Meals for the Elderly, and over two dozen other like organizations. At peak hours the Pumpkin Coach was so busy that visitors found it hard to snag a parking place in the large lot. Now, at 6:00 A.M., the shop, of course, was closed.

Cora Lee's car was not reflected in the large front window of the Pumpkin Coach, though it stood not ten feet from it, just across the sidewalk. None of the cars was mirrored there, nor were the trees that edged the parking lot, or the houses and shops across the street. The window could reflect nothing; its plate glass lay shattered across the paving, its jagged shards reflecting only the milky sky. Sharp pieces of broken glass stuck up from the window frame like knife blades.

The shop's window was done up each Monday night with particularly appealing items, usually arranged on some theme. On Tuesday, viewers could enjoy the display, read the price list, and make their selections. They would return on Wednesday morning to hand over their cash and record their names on the "sold" list, often having to stand in line for the privilege. They would pick up their merchandise the following week, after the window was changed. Though the shop didn't open until 10:00, the first arrivals might be there before 7:00, bringing their camp chairs, intent on being first in line.

The Pumpkin Coach was a mecca for the ladies of the Senior Survival club. They tried to rotate their visits so one or the other dropped by several times a day as new donations were put out. Usually Cora Lee took the Tuesday morning run to check out the contents of the new window display. This morning was the same as usual; she had stopped to check the window on her way to take the kit home-and had looked on the scene startled.

Within the display, broken glass sparkled across the small and handsome caned writing desk that held center stage and across the embroidered table cover tossed casually over one end. There was nothing on the desk, but three indentations had been left in the folded cover. Behind the desk hung five paintings and seven carved toys, all skewed aside where the backdrop had been pulled awry, revealing the dark shop behind.

At the foot of the desk Fern Barth lay unmoving, the wounds in her chest and shoulder bleeding into the spills of shattered glass, her blond hair flecked with glass, her fingers clutching a fragment of old, faded ribbon. Cora Lee stood looking, feeling cold, her hands shaking, and for a long moment she didn't know what to do.

Joe Grey and Dulcie got their first look at the morning paper as they returned from a midnight hunt. The Molena Point Gazette lay folded on a driveway, the front page partially visible. Hastily they pawed the paper open, crouching over the picture.

The Pumpkin Coach was enjoying extra publicity; the shop's display was featured prominently, its window nearly filling the space above the fold-a picture that, if they were right, was going to cause plenty of activity in the village, and not all of it welcome.

Since midnight they had stalked rats beneath the low, dense foliage of a dwarf juniper forest. The decorative conifers covered a residential hillside, a mass of three-foot high bushes so thick-growing that even in the silver dawn the world beneath had been without light, its prickly tangle of interlaced branches stretching away in pure blackness. The warm, sandy earth beneath was riddled with rat holes-a hunting preserve for the small and quick.

Their breakfast catch had consisted of two fat rats and a small rabbit. They could have killed many more, but they couldn't eat any more. Leaving the bony parts and the skin and fur, they had spent leisurely moments washing their paws and whiskers, then wound their way out of the dark jungle, their eyes shuttered and their ears back to avoid the tiny, prickly twigs. They came out onto the concrete drive just below a two-story house whose shades were still drawn. The cats' coats smelled sharply of juniper, and their mouths were filled with the rusty aftertaste of rat. It was as they padded down the damp concrete drive toward the street below that the morning paper caught their attention.

Thanks to the cheaper production costs of modern technology, the photo was in full color. It showed three carved wooden chests sitting on an embroidered table cover atop a small writing desk in the shop window. Joe pawed the paper open to the article, his dark gray ears sharp forward, his yellow eyes keen with interest. He glanced up once at the windows of the house but saw no one, and heard no sound. Flattening the pages with quick paws, they crowded together side by side to read. Any neighbor peering out would suppose the kitties had found a mealy bug or some such innocuous creature in the damp folds of newsprint and were about to eat or torment it. The article held their full attention.

ISELMAN ART COLLECTION UNDER BLOCK

Dorothy Iselman, widow of village benefactor James Iselman, has put the couple's multimillion-dollar art collection up for sale, retaining only a few favorite items. The oils and watercolors by famous eighteenth-century artists will be auctioned at Butterfield's in San Francisco in mid-July. Less valuable pieces, such as the African and Mexican folk art that Iselman enjoyed owning, have been sold to several local galleries and collectors. Several nineteenth-century wooden toys and primitive, carved chests have been donated to the Pumpkin Coach, a special offering for its charity sales. These can be seen in a handsome display installed last night in the shop's front window.

"What do they mean by primitive?" Joe said.

"Rough, bold. Not all refined and polished," Dulcie said knowledgeably. Her green eyes widened. "Don't they look Spanish? Could these be three of the Ortega-Diaz chests? Sitting in the Iselman house for how many years?"

"Not likely. Wouldn't Casselrod have known about them, tried to buy them?"

"Maybe he did try, we don't know. And did the Iselmans know about the letters? Would they have thought to look for some hidden compartment, like the white chest had?"

The cats looked at each other and took off down the drive heading for the Pumpkin Coach. Galloping through the fog across the empty residential streets, brushing through flowerbeds and trampling a delicate stand of Icelandic poppies, racing through patios and gardens, they had nearly reached the two long buildings standing end to end that housed the charity shop when a pale car pulled out of the street behind, coming straight for them. Dodging across the sidewalk into a recessed entry, they crouched against the door of a tile shop. Joe got one good glimpse of the license.

"Got the first four digits. 2ZJZ. A tan Infinity."

They stood looking after the vanished driver, then raced down the narrow brick walk between the two buildings, approaching the front of the charity shop. Somewhere in the village, a siren screamed, not uncommon in the early morning hours. Galloping past parked cars whose metal bodies exuded chill, they passed a car still warm, a green Chevy with the driver's door open.

"Cora Lee's car?" Dulcie said.

Joe glanced in, catching Cora Lee's scent, wondering why she had left the door open, and where she was. Skirting the glass that glinted across the sidewalk, warily he approached the shop window.

They could smell blood, and the sweet scent of candy. Circling around the glass, the cats reared up to look.

Fern Barth lay in the window, the blood from her wounds turning dark. Joe, leaping up over the jagged teeth of glass that protruded from the sill, stepping carefully around the blood and debris, put his nose to hers.

She wasn't breathing but she was faintly warm. He was backing away when sirens came screaming and a squad car and an emergency vehicle careened around the corner. Joe sailed out of the window over the ragged glass and behind the potted plants that stood before the shop. The cats were never able to shake their need to hide-and maybe for good reason. Max Harper wasn't unaware of cats showing up at a scene, of cat hairs clinging to evidence, of paw prints where they should not have been.

An officer swung out of the car, gun drawn, scanning the area, leaving his partner behind the wheel. From the ambulance, two medics stepped up into the shop window as if they knew exactly where to go. As the officer on foot checked the parked cars, the police unit took off toward the back street, apparently to circle the building. The officer on foot approached the green Chevy. Looking inside, he didn't touch anything. He checked the backseat, but didn't close the door. As he checked out the other cars, Joe and Dulcie slipped through the shadows to the bushes that lined the walk between the buildings. There, Joe tried to pull glass from his paws, dragging his pads across the small branches to dislodge clinging shards, then plucking some out with his teeth, spitting glass into the dirt, his ears back with annoyance.

The officer on foot had left the cars and moved up into the window, they heard him walk on back inside the shop. The minute he was gone, Joe sped for the Chevy and leaped into the seat.

He sniffed at Cora Lee's purse, but when he smelled the dash and the cell phone, he shook his head with disbelief. Dropping out again, he returned to the bushes, to Dulcie.

"The kit's scent is all over the phone."

"The kit made the emergency call?"

"Apparently. She's watched us enough times."

"So where is she? She stayed with Cora Lee last night. Where is Cora Lee? Oh, she's not in the shop! Lying hurt in there! But what happened?" Dulcie peered out toward the shattered display window, then turned to look at Joe, her eyes wide. "Or did she…? Oh, but Cora Lee wouldn't…"

Joe just looked at her.

"She was really hurt when she lost the part," Dulcie whispered. "Angry at Traynor, at Vivi, at Sam Ladler-she must have hated Fern. But she wouldn't…"

Joe was busy sniffing the bushes. "Cora Lee brushed by here. So did the kit. Come on."

They followed the scents of woman and cat up the brick walk and around to the street behind the Pumpkin Coach, where the shop's back door opened. The empty street smelled of car exhaust. They didn't see the officer on foot, nor was the squad car in sight. As they approached the small, blind utility alley just beyond the Pumpkin Coach, the scents they followed deepened. They could see nothing in the short dead-end alley but a heap of wadded white paper down at the end piled between the trash cans.

But something else was there, besides paper. They glimpsed dark hair among the white, and a tan arm. Then they saw the kit crouched over the figure, pawing at her, trying to wake her.

Cora Lee lay among the rubble, her white dress twisted, her face grayish and sick. When the kit saw Joe and Dulcie she bolted into them mewling.

"She's dead. Oh, she's not dead! Oh, help her!"

Sirens screamed again as another squad car roared through the side streets. Pushing the kit away, Joe nosed at Cora Lee trying to detect breathing. Yes, a faint, warm breath, though her skin was chilled.

"She's alive, Kit. We need the medics, the cops. But you called-"

"From Cora Lee's car phone like you showed me. I told them there was a dead woman in the window."

"You told them Cora Lee was here?"

"She wasn't-I didn't know she was here. Just that Fern woman in the window."

"Stay with her, Kit. Stay until we-"

But Dulcie had already raced away, headed for Cora Lee's car and cell phone.