Cat On The Scent

9

The rain stopped Wednesday morning. That evening after supper, Mrs. Murphy gathered Pewter and Tucker on the screened-in porch.

“Four miles is too far in the muck. Let's wait a few more days,” Pewter whined.

“For all we know, the plane will be gone by then.” Mrs. Murphy sniffed the wind, a light breeze out of the west. “I'm heading out.”

“I'll go with you.” Tucker's big ears moved forward.

“I'm staying home.” Pewter sat down.

“Chicken,” the dog teased her.

“I'm not chicken. I don't feel like getting dirty, especially since I've just given myself a bath.”

“Well, let's go.” Murphy opened the screen door, Tucker immediately behind her. The door flapped twice. Pewter watched them bound over the meadow by the barn. She felt a pang of missing out but not enough to follow. She walked back inside, deciding to curl up on the 1930s chair with the mohair throw. She liked to snuggle in the mohair but wished Harry were wealthy enough to afford cashmere. Pewter craved luxury.

Reaching the first creek dividing Harry's property from Blair Bainbridge's, the cat and dog were stopped by high water.

“Ugly.” Tucker paced the bank.

“Let's go up to the beaver dam.”

“If it's standing.”

“Hasn't been that much water. Come on.”

“I hate those beavers.” Tucker did, too.

“We'll be across before they know it.”

A quarter of a mile upstream the log-and-sapling lodge dominated the creek along with the sturdy dam the beavers had constructed.

Carefully, Mrs. Murphy put one paw on the dam. She tested its sturdiness, then sped across, small splashes of water in her wake.

Tucker whined but followed. Her progress wasn't as graceful but she made it. They were halfway across Blair's easternmost meadow before the beavers emerged from their lodge to inspect their dam.

Lights at Blair's place caught their attention. A white Land Rover was parked in the driveway.

“Wonder what Archie's doing at Blair's?”

Mrs. Murphy kept moving. “Trying to borrow the Porsche.”

They laughed until they reached the ridge, about seven hundred feet above sea level. They paused at the top, which bristled with rock outcroppings. Although only four miles across, the terrain was rugged in parts.

After catching her breath, Mrs. Murphy nudged Tucker. “Ready?”

“Yeah.”

They swept down the ridge, skirting the thorn creepers and the underbrush, where they startled rabbits and one lurking fox. Mrs. Murphy hoped the bobcat was hunting somewhere else tonight.

The last creek had an upturned tree fallen over it. Mrs. Murphy danced across it. Tucker chose to swim the creek.

The abandoned buildings of the Urquhart farm shone silver in the moonlight, the slate roofs sparkling as though obsidian.

The doors to the barn were shut.

The two animals circled the barn, searching for burrows, preferably uninhabited. Mrs. Murphy looked up.

The Dutch door of a stall was partially open, flapping in the gentle breeze.

“I'll try it.” Mrs. Murphy squatted down, paused a second, then sprang upward, reaching the slight opening before the top door banged back again. She dropped to the old hay on the stall floor.

Walking over to the big doors, she pulled with her paw just enough to create a crack. Tucker wedged her nose in and both cat and dog pushed. The big door creaked back on its overhead track just enough for the powerful dog to push herself inside.

Tucker stopped. Tommy Van Allen's plane was still parked in the middle of the vast center aisle. “I'll be.”

“You sniff around the plane,” Mrs. Murphy ordered. “I'll get in the cockpit.”

The tiger unleashed her claws, vaulting at a stall post. She shimmied up, reaching a massive cross beam, and walked along the top of it until the white plane was directly underneath, ten feet below.

“That's a big drop, Murphy.”

“I know.” Murphy stared down at the wing, backed up a bit, then jumped off the beam. She hit the wing with a thud, sliding a little in the process, leaving red clay marks to disturb the pristine whiteness.

“You okay?” the dog called.

“Yes, but it's slick.” The cat tiptoed to the edge of the cockpit. She easily opened the door, as the handle was large and turned down, and the door was slightly ajar. Then she hopped inside, leaving the door hanging wide open. The odor of old leather filled her nostrils.

“See anything?” Tucker called up.

“Lots of dials and a throttle.”

“Blood?”

“No, squeaky-clean.”

Tucker, somewhat disappointed, returned to the task of sniffing around the plane. The odor of gas killed other scents.

Mrs. Murphy poked at knobs, put one eye close to the throttle to see if anything had fallen into the slidpath. She hopped around, unwittingly leaving muddy paw prints as a signature.

Finding nothing, she readied to jump back down on the wing. Then, on the pilot's-side door, she noticed a leather pocket like a map pocket on an old car door. She reached over but couldn't quite get to it. She reached again and caught the very inside of the pocket, slowly moving the door toward her. She didn't want to shut the door since the inside handle might not open easily.

With one paw, claws out, she pulled open the pocket while with the other paw she held the door from closing. She fished in the pocket, pulling out the only thing in there, a folded-over map, used so many times, the creases were worn to nothingness. She grabbed it between her teeth, hopping onto the wing. She skidded on the flap side of the wing and launched herself to the soft center-aisle turf below.

The two friends walked to the door, squeezed through, and opened the map in the moonlight. Mrs. Murphy carefully sat on the edge of the map so it wouldn't blow away; she loved the smooth feel of paper under her bottom.

“What is it?” Tucker strained to make sense of the colors and lines.

“Your face is too close. Step back.”

“Oh.” She did as instructed. “It's the U.S. Geological Survey map for the county. Pretty colors.”

“Can you carry this back home? I'll hide it in Simon's house.”

“Why not leave it here?”

“Because I think someone will come back for it.”

“Tommy?”

“No. Tommy's dead.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don't. Cat intuition. I saw two people leave this plane. One had to be Tommy, a very tall person, but it was raining, fog was swirling down, and I couldn't get a good look. Plus I was already at the creek and had climbed up in the oak tree. The other person was short.”

“Anyone would be short compared to Tommy Van Allen.”

“Tucker, put your paw on both corners. If I can look down at this map maybe I can see better.” The cat drew herself to her full height, glancing down. “Hmm. Pieces are outlined.”

“Maybe an old flight path.”

“These are more like squares and a big outline outside that.”

“Was there a flight plan up there?”

“No.”

“Why would two people take off, not tell anyone, and land here? And one of them is now missing.”

“I haven't a single idea. But they planned to put the plane in the barn. I really think they did.”

“You don't think the fog and bad weather drove them down?”

“There are better place to land than Tally's old airstrip. There are lots of airstrips in Albemarle County. To come down here you have to shoot between Little Yellow Mountain and that ridge we crossed. It's not threading a needle but you have to be pretty darned good, especially with the downdraft and winds that swirl around mountains. Whoever landed here in the fog was a hell of a pilot.”

“Tommy was good.”

“But it wasn't Tommy. I saw him hop out and open the doors. At least, I think that was Tommy.”

“How will we ever get Harry over here?” Tucker wondered.

“Only if she visits Tally or if she rides over. She hardly ever comes this way, because the second creek crossing changes every time there's a storm. Who knows how long it will take the humans to find this plane?”

“If Rick Shaw is logical he'll eventually search each private airstrip.”

“That's true. I wonder when he'll get to that?” The cat noticed Mars, pulsating red in the sky. “I do believe whoever flew that plane will be back for this map.”

“There have to be thousands of survey maps of the county. This one isn't valuable.”

“If it has fingerprints on it, it is.” Mrs. Murphy studied the map again, paying attention to the hand-drawn lines. “That's it.”

“What?”

“The big outline—it's the watershed. I remember from the map posted on the bulletin board at the commission meeting. I was up on the desk. I could see it clearly.”