Cat On The Edge

26

The cats crept behind a beam, cringing down as Wark's light swept the attic above them; it returned low, just missed them, flashing over along the top of the heavy timber where they hid.

And suddenly he fired again, into the dark beyond the beam but too close, they heard it ping into the ceiling not three feet from them; it was a wild shot. His light careened on along the base of the slanted roof, searching.

When he failed to find them he fired twice more, wild and uselessly. But he was crawling in their direction, hunching along a narrow joist straight toward them. "Split up," Dulcie whispered. "We can jump him from behind."

"And get blown to confetti."

"Have to make him drop his gun, hit him, and leap away. If he drops it down among those wires, that will give us time while he tries to fish it out."

"I don't think…" He had started to say it was a crazy idea, when, from below in the street, sirens screamed.

Nothing, nothing had ever sounded so good.

Immediately Wark's light went out and they heard him scuttle away, back toward the hole in the ceiling. That earsplitting squad car wail was the finest sound Joe had ever imagined.

Two more sirens screamed from the front of the building, then another from the side street. He could just picture the police units careening up Ocean, converging on the agency-fierce and predatory, all muscle.

They sat up and stretched, and slowly their pounding hearts eased into a gentler rhythm. They heard, below, the big metal gates roll open, and then voices. And, nearer, they heard a thud as if Wark had dropped down, perhaps onto the desk in the office.

"Is he gone?" Dulcie breathed.

"He'd better be. This is no way to spend the rest of your life."

"Short lives," she said shakily.

In a moment they heard the smaller gate to the restaurant rattle, then thuds and voices in a confusion of sound, and a shout. Then the whish of the men's room door opening.

When footsteps rang on the tile, they rose and headed for the hole in the ceiling and for civilized company. A click stopped them, a click from the blackness as Wark cocked his revolver. They dropped and crept away; he was still with them.

The ladder rattled, someone was climbing, likely a cop was climbing up. In another second the guy would stick his head up like a target in a shooting gallery. "Look out!" Joe shouted. "He'll shoot! Keep down!"

Joe didn't think about what he was doing. He had no choice. At his shout, Wark burst out of the blackness half-running, half-crawling. Avoiding the hole into the men's room, he dived for the opening over the office. He was a blur plunging down. They heard him hit the desk, a huge thud, hit the floor, heard him running, and heard a door bang.

They approached the opening and looked over.

The office was empty.

Behind them the ladder clinked again, the rattling of footsteps on the metal rungs.

Joe knew he'd blown it, that the fuzz would be very interested in where that voice came from. Well, so the cops had heard a shout. So there was no human up here. So, what cop was going to believe that was a cat shouting?

Another clink, and another. And Clyde's head appeared rising up through the lit hole.

Joe gaped. He leaped, piling into Clyde, licking his face, purring so hard he choked.

"What the hell? What are you doing up here? What are you so excited about? That was you who shouted! I heard the guy run, heard him jump down." Clyde held him away. "Are you hurt? I don't see any blood. Where's Dulcie?" They heard running and shouting from the laundry, and two more shots were fired somewhere below.

"What the hell's going on, Joe?"

Joe swallowed.

He'd sworn he could never talk face-to-face with Clyde. He stared at Clyde, frozen. He stared until they heard officers' voices ring out from below in the restaurant.

They heard the gate slam again, and a car door slam. Then from behind Joe, a soft voice said, "When are we going to get out of here? I'm tired of this crawl hole. I'm tired of cobwebs on my ears, and I'm tired of being shot at." And Dulcie strolled into the light.

She gave Clyde a green-eyed gaze, and leaped past his face, down through the hole, hitting the ladder twice with quick paws.

Max Harper moved fast into the men's room, and stopped. He studied Clyde, standing on the ladder with his head stuck through the ceiling.

Clyde looked down. "No one up here. Did you get Wark?"

"Picked him up outside the laundry." Harper motioned Clyde down. "Move on out. Who's up there?"

"Not a soul. Just my cat."

"Has to be. I heard someone talking-two voices." He switched off the overhead light, slipped his flashlight from his belt, and started up the ladder.

"There's no one, Max. I was talking to the cats." Clyde backed down the ladder carrying Joe, and glanced across at Dulcie, where she sat demurely out of the way, in the corner. "I don't know how they got in the attic, but they were pretty scared."

"That gray cat's yours? The one I see around the house? I didn't know you brought him to work with you." He scowled at Dulcie. "I don't remember the other one."

Clyde shrugged. "That one belongs to Wilma, I'm cat-sitting." He grinned. "I guess I'm getting old; I talk to them a lot."

From Clyde's shoulder, Joe looked innocently back at Max Harper. He'd spent many a night lying under the kitchen table while Harper and Clyde played poker. Then, Harper usually smelled of horses, but not now, when he was in uniform.

Harper scowled at him, lifted his paw, and looked closely at his claws. Joe looked, too, and saw a trace of blood. Harper said, "Wark's face was torn up pretty bad. Long bloody scratches." He patted Joe, climbed on up the ladder, and shone his light into the darkness, He stood looking for a minute, then climbed up. They could hear him crawling toward the far end.

He made a surprisingly quick survey. He returned, holstered his gun, and swung down the ladder. Then the two men moved out into the restaurant. The cats followed.

The restaurant blazed with light. Every light was on, bouncing against the varnished pine walls, illuminating the stained, flowered carpet.

Harper stood watching his men as they searched, then he grinned at Clyde, the smile making surprising lines in that somber face. "Hey, we have our evidence."

"What, the motor numbers?"

"No. Looks like we have some money deposits. Kate Osborne brought in the bankbooks. They're in the safe, as we speak. Foreign bankbooks, big numbers."

"Well for Pete's sake, all this time… Kate didn't tell me about any bankbooks."

Harper shrugged. "She told me."

The four officers searching the room moved nearer to them, and two went behind the bar and began checking the shelves underneath. Joe wasn't sure what they were looking for, but he knew where it had to be hidden. He slipped close to Clyde, and nudged Clyde's ankle with his nose.

Ten minutes later, as Clyde and Max Harper stood in the shop yard, followed closely by Dulcie, an officer shouted to Harper that he had another call on the police radio. Harper stepped over to a squad car to take it, grumbling because the department hadn't been issued cellulars, thanks to local politics.

Joe thought Clyde had handled it very well, just a nudge to the ankle, a flip of the ears toward the door and a long serious look, and Clyde got the message. He had edged on out to the yard, and Harper, finished inside, moved out with him.

When Harper returned, he and Clyde and two officers headed for the men's rest room. Immediately Joe jumped down from beside the bar phone and the other cat followed.

The officers searched the men's room, nearly taking apart the fixtures. They examined the water tank, and two men checked the attic again.

At last Harper said, "That call had to be a hoax. There's not a damn thing in here." He returned to the mirror, and jiggled it, and examined its bracket more closely. Frowning, he wiggled the glass. When it shifted in its frame he attempted to slide it up.

It slid. He lifted it out, revealing a small metal door the size of a medicine cabinet door, set flush into the wall. He leaned the glass against the booth partition.

"Brennan, give me the key you took off Wark."

Brennan handed Harper a brass key. As Harper fitted it into the lock, Joe and Dulcie crowded close between a tangle of uniform trouser legs and black regulation shoes. And though Captain Harper didn't glance down at them, they could tell he was aware of them in that attentive way police had. They hardly breathed as Harper turned the key and opened the metal door.

Crammed inside the little space were four fat plastic bags. Harper pulled them out, opened one, and fanned through a sheaf of hundred dollar bills. Holding one by the edge, he looked at it carefully, then smiled and slipped it back with the rest.

At the back of the rectangular hole was a second metal door. Harper glanced at a thin officer. "Wendell, go check out the laundry, see if you can find this."

Later when the cats were alone, sitting on top of the tow car, their ears assailed by the police radio, and watching two officers fingerprint the Corvette, Dulcie whispered, "I expected it to be drugs in those plastic bags."

"So did I. Who would guess that Wark and Jimmie were running counterfeit money along with the cars. And laundering the profits from both."

Officer Wendell had found the second door to the medicine cabinet in the laundry office, behind the cubbyholes. After some discussion, a laundry employee had been willing to talk. He told Harper the money was wrapped as laundry, loaded into the delivery trucks, and distributed on the regular route to five other restaurants along with clean uniforms, dinner napkins, and tablecloths. He said that was all he knew.

Police assumed that the money was locked in the cabinet from the men's room side when Wark or Jimmie went for coffee. Harper never did find out who made the anonymous phone call to the station, the call that urged him to search the men's room. The dispatcher said it was a male voice. "Kind of gravelly," she told Harper. "He just said to search the men's room, that it was urgent. Then he hung up."

Joe was still stressed from that call. He'd had to wait while the cops finished searching the front of the restaurant and moved on to the kitchen. As he placed the call from the phone behind the counter, Dulcie followed Harper to be sure he received Joe's message from the dispatcher.

After the money was found, they overheard Captain Harper send two men over to the Osborne house, to pick up Jimmie and Sheril Beckwhite for questioning. Harper kept Lee Wark cuffed in the back of a squad car until they finished up and headed back to the station.

The cats lay stretched out in the sun atop the cab of the tow truck, feeling smug, when Joe glanced up and saw Kate coming from the showroom, walking hesitantly. She stood talking with Clyde and Captain Harper for some time. Then she and Clyde came on across the shop yard. She looked pale. Clyde put his arm around her.

She leaned against his shoulder. "I thought I'd be glad they arrested Jimmie. I don't know how I feel."

She looked at Clyde helplessly. "I gave Harper the evidence to convict my own husband. I'm sending Jimmie to jail." She buried her face against Clyde's shoulder.

Then she moved away, and blew her nose. "Sheril was with him." She started to laugh. "They arrested Sheril." She shook with what Joe thought was pent-up nerves. "The police arrested Jimmie and Sheril…" She doubled over, laughing. "Arrested them-in our conjugal bed."

She stopped laughing and clung to Clyde, shivering. "What did I do? What did I do to Jimmie?"

Clyde held her and patted her head.

Joe wanted to say, "Who's sending him to jail. Jimmie's sending himself to jail."

But he hurt for Kate. And he watched her with increasing curiosity, remembering Jimmie's words, the night they followed him in the fog-Where did the unnatural things come from? How do you think that makes me feel, my own wife…

When at last Kate noticed him, she held out her hand. "Hello, Joe Grey," she said, stroking him. He twisted around, sniffing her fingers, sniffing up her arm. That made her smile. He wanted to tell her she was well rid of Jimmie, that Jimmie Osborne was no good, and that she could do better. He let her pet him and rub his ears until Dulcie growled.

Kate looked startled, and drew her hand back. Joe glared at Dulcie, but Dulcie's dark tabby coat stood straight up, and her tail was huge. Her growl rumbled so fiercely it shook her.

And Kate stopped looking surprised, gave Dulcie a knowing look, and moved away.

But it was not until two nights later, in Jolly's alley, that Dulcie and Kate began to be friends; and that Joe and Dulcie were put to the final terrifying test of their strange metamorphosis.