Cat Pay The Devil

21

W hen Cage Jones grabbed Charlie Harper, the only witness was the white cat-the only witness who could speak of what he had seen in the alleyway and behind the Harper stables. The other animals could not.

It had taken more courage than Cotton thought he possessed to go to that ranch seeking out the tall redheaded woman and ask her for help for the captive human. He had never in his life approached humans except to steal their food in the back alleys where his clowder had sometimes traveled.

But he had once seen Kit speak with the redheaded woman, and that lady had seemed gentle and respectful of his kind, so he’d thought maybe it would be all right. He had heard her promise that if ever his small, wild band should need help, she would come. Cotton remembered.

But now the redheaded lady needed help, perhaps to save her life.

Approaching the ranch, three times he had nearly turned back. But at last, shivering and ducking away from nothing, he had come down through the woods, avoiding the bridle trail, not wanting even to leave paw prints.

When he slipped into the stable, the horses had stared over their stalls at him with only mild interest, but the two big dogs in their closed stall had huffed and sniffed under the door, then had barked and kept barking, and in a moment he heard the door of the house open. When he looked out of the stable, redheaded Charlie Harper was coming across the yard to see what they were barking at. He’d tried to steel himself to speak to her, but he was so frightened he had ducked into the stall that held saddles, shivering, not daring even to peer out-and the next moment he was filled with guilt because his presence had brought her there.

He’d heard a vehicle approach from behind the barn where there was no road, only a horse trail. Little rocks crunching under its wheels. The dogs were barking too loudly for Charlie Harper to hear it stop quietly beyond the closed back door. But Cotton had slipped out of the saddle room’s open window and around to the back, along the side of the barn, concealing himself among the bushes as best he could considering that he was blindingly white and seldom able to hide very well.

Peering around the corner of the barn, he’d watched two men step out of an old rusty vehicle. It was the same strange, rusty car that had been near the house up in the woods beyond the ruins, where the silver-haired woman was tied up.

And these were the same two men he’d seen there, the one bulky as a bull, the other, thin with long brown hair. The two men stank the same, too. Sour sweat, and the whiskey humans drank; Cotton drew back in the bushes as they slipped around the building to the front, where the big doors stood open. Cotton followed.

The minute they saw Charlie in the stable they raced in and grabbed her, scuffling and swearing and fighting, and Charlie Harper was shouting and the dogs were barking and leaping against the stall door and the horses plunging in their stalls; the big man laughed at Charlie’s rage-then Cotton found his nerve and leaped into the thinner man’s face, clawing and biting. But the big man was gone with her, dragging her out the back door to the old car. And the thin man grabbed Cotton off his face and threw him; he landed twisting and screaming in a pile of straw.

Leaping up, he raced out the back again, to see them shove her into the back of the old car they called the Jeep, and tie her hands and feet together. They muttered and argued between themselves, then the thin man snapped, “That rotting trailer won’t hold her, you could jam your fist through those walls. Damn woman’ll kick them apart, kicks like a mule.”

“Not if we tie her up good, she won’t. Get a move on, I don’t wanna be stumbling around in the dark up there in that mess.”

“Ain’t near dark yet. And we can’t get the Jeep in there, not anywhere near enough. Have to drag her-”

“So we drag her,” the big man said. “What’s your problem?”

“She’s that cop’s wife, is what! The damn chief. You think of that, Cage! It’s a federal-”

“It ain’t no federal offense to mess with the wife of a cop, for Chrissake. That ain’t the same as-”

“How the hell do you know? You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

But Cotton heard no more. He couldn’t stop them; they could easily kill him, and then maybe no one would know what had happened to redheaded Charlie Harper, or to the gray-haired human. And Cotton knew only one thing to do. Despite his terror of the human world, he spun away out of the stable, across the yard and away through the pasture, running full out, hitting only the high spots across the open fields, heading for the village. Not only fear drove him now, but rage. Running and panting and his heart pounding too hard, the feral tom was a dazzling white streak exploding down across the brown hills, as incandescent as a small meteor. Something in Cotton, recalling his own captive misery last winter, couldn’t bear that those two women who were not like other humans were now captive and helpless. He could only pray that he could find Kit, who would know how to bring help, could only pray that he could find his way to her through the village among the confusion of houses and shops and so many moving cars and hurrying people-among all the millions of smells that would hide the scent he remembered, of the kit’s home.

He tried to remember which way, from the night Kit had led their escape away from the vicious cage, to her tree house and then out of the village to safety on the open hills. Kit’s tree house could be anywhere among the hundreds of village houses. No clear direction came to him; he had been too terrified to pay proper attention. The evening was still light, the sun low and orange ahead of him as it dropped toward the orange-tinted sea. On and on down the hills the white tom raced, rigid with fear that he would never find the tattercoat kit, that his terrified search among humans would come to nothing, and that those two special ladies would be lost.

It was dark when Max sped home, driving too fast, his siren and emergency light blasting a furor of alarm in the still evening. Half a mile before his turnoff he extinguished both, quelling the loud, bright announcement of his approach. Skidding a turn onto his own dirt lane that led in from the highway to the house, he slowed. The time was nine thirty.

Ryan had called him ten minutes earlier, ten minutes that had seemed like a lifetime. He had no clear idea how long Charlie had been missing. Swerving his car onto the grass shoulder between the lane and pasture so as not to obliterate other tire marks, he parked near Ryan’s truck and Charlie’s SUV, and for a moment he imagined that Charlie was there, that she would step out of the kitchen or the barn waving to him.

He saw only Ryan, standing alone in the lighted door to the stable. He heard three more units swing into the lane behind him, the crunch of tires on gravel.

Getting out, he walked on the rough grass, motioning for his men to park on the shoulder; he stood looking around the yard, scanning it for fresh tire marks and footprints, still imagining that Charlie would appear, stepping sassily out of the barn. He was empty inside, all his cop’s professional detachment vanished; empty, and shaky, and lost.

An hour before the Greenlaws knew that Wilma was missing, Mavity Flowers learned the news when, her mind set on evicting her brother, she headed for Molena Point PD.

Greeley had been dead drunk at dinner, slopping food on himself and laughing raucously, and he’d stunk to high heaven of booze and unwashed clothes, was so disgusting that Cora Lee had sent twelve-year-old Lori upstairs with her supper. The child had eagerly picked up her plate and vanished; she’d seen enough drinking in her own family; Greeley’s behavior brought back too much pain.

Days ago Mavity’s housemates, Susan and Gabrielle and Cora Lee, had ceased being polite to Greeley. Gray-haired no-nonsense Susan Britain was ready to sic her two big dogs on Greeley. It wouldn’t take much; neither the Lab nor the dalmatian liked the old man. Blond Gabrielle had stayed as far away from Greeley as she could manage, and had talked about moving out. Cora Lee had simply looked at Mavity, her lovely, café-au-lait beauty and dark eyes very sad, and Mavity could do nothing less than get Greeley out of there. Disregarding the sinking feeling in her middle at the thought of abandoning her own brother, she had called the department to ask how to get rid of him.

Mabel Farthy had answered; Mabel was the only dispatcher Mavity knew very well, and with whom she was comfortable. Angry as she was, it still took a lot of courage to boot her own brother out on the street, but she didn’t know what else to do.

Greeley had told her that, as her brother, he had every right to move in. The downstairs apartment was vacant, wasn’t it? So what was the problem? When he’d first arrived, showing up one evening without calling, without letting her know he was even in the States after she’d heard nothing from him for six months, she’d told him to go to a motel. That had shocked her housemates-but that was two weeks ago.

Arriving unannounced, just at supper, he had marched boldly into the house sniffing at the good smells of roast beef and gravy and all the other fixings; then they were all at the table, Greeley tucking his napkin into his collar and belching. Susan and Cora Lee and Gabrielle made a fuss over him at first, as they would any guest; Susan said he must be tired, and gray-haired Susan Britain had served him generously of the good roast. Cora Lee had poured wine for him, over Mavity’s disapproving scowl. That was the first night; later, for a while, the ladies were too well mannered to be rude, but at last they lost their patience.

Mavity had put a folding cot in one of the two small basement apartments they were renovating as rentals, apartments that they meant, later on down the years, to accommodate live-in help. She’d made him promise to stay just the one night and then go on about his business. She didn’t know what business that was and she didn’t want to know. Now he’d been there two weeks, dug in like a mule refusing to leave its stall. She’d left the other apartment locked up tight, the one they’d already cleaned up and painted and furnished real nice, and had told him it was rented.

Now, after Mabel Farthy suggested she come on down to the station and sign a complaint, Mavity and Mabel stood on either side of the dispatcher’s counter sipping the coffee Mabel had just brewed. Mabel was in her late fifties, pudgy, but with a bright blond wash on her short hair, and an honest way of dealing with folks.

“Captain Harper and both the detectives are out on cases,” she said. She sounded unnaturally distressed, and it took a lot to upset Mabel. “The chief is…” She paused, watching Mavity. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” Mavity said nervously.

“You’re not to repeat this-I’m sure it’ll turn out all right,” Mabel said gently.

Alarm filled Mavity.

“You haven’t heard about Wilma.”

“That wasn’t Wilma, the break-in and-”

“No! Oh, no. She’s…Nothing like that.” Mabel had taken her hand. “She’s only…Mavity, Wilma is missing.”

“Missing! She can’t be missing, she went up to the city. Didn’t…?”

“She checked out of her hotel this morning. Her things are at her house, suitcase, packages. Her car. But…Captain Harper isn’t sure Wilma ever got home.”

“I don’t understand. If her things are there…Where would she go?” Mavity felt cold all over. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Wilma had just gone up to the city for a court hearing, that was old stuff to Wilma. “She was going to stop in Gilroy. You’d better tell-”

“He knows that. Davis has gone up there. This afternoon, someone was in Wilma’s house, searched it, left it a mess. Captain has an APB out for her, all the law-enforcement agencies across the state. I think the captain and Detective Garza are still at the house. You didn’t talk with her today, haven’t heard from her? Any messages, anything that could help?”

“I haven’t seen or talked with her since…since last Thursday,” Mavity said, thinking back. She was so distraught that, when at last she’d left Mabel, she’d found it hard to drive home, had to concentrate hard on what she was doing. And at home, after she’d told Susan and Cora Lee and Gabrielle, and despite the fact that she’d filed the complaint against Greeley, she’d gone down to ask if he might have seen Wilma. Not that he’d care if Wilma was in trouble, not after she’d booted him out of her own house last year, Greeley dead drunk and dragging that horrible black tomcat in there to torment Mavity, herself. Greeley barging in and embarrassing her when she’d just come out of the hospital and Wilma was taking care of her. And then Wilma telling him to leave, Mavity thought, smiling. No, Greeley had no love for Wilma Getz. But still, he might have taken a phone message and not bothered to pass it on, or might have glimpsed her on the street. She knew she’d have to ask him.

She’d heard him on the back deck of the downstairs apartment, had found him sitting in the chaise swilling beer, the radio on, singing along with it, out of tune and loud enough so everyone in the neighborhood could hear him. Coming onto the deck, she saw him toss his empty beer can down into the canyon-with how many others?

Strange thing was, when she’d told him Wilma was missing, the news upset him more than she’d imagined. The old man stopped guzzling and came alert, and right away started asking questions about what she’d been doing in San Francisco. But Mavity got the feeling he already knew the answers. And when she told him about Cage Jones escaping from jail, Greeley had got real nervous. But again, as if he already knew and wanted to see what she knew.

Well, the escape had been in the afternoon paper. Mabel had shown her the clipping before she left the station. She wondered why Greeley had asked her those questions. And what was he so fidgety about? Nothing made sense, Greeley didn’t make sense-but then, with the amount of booze he drank, what did she expect?

Greeley and Cage Jones had grown up together, went to school together in the village. She didn’t know if they’d stayed in touch; she didn’t know much about Greeley’s business, all those years down in Central America. She had wondered where he got the money to buy himself that fancy PT Cruiser, just three days ago. She’d asked him, “How you going to make the payments, Greeley? You plan to get a job?”

“Paid cash for the car,” Greeley said, laughing an openmouthed laugh at her. “Got a deal on it. I always did like a green car.”

“Where, Greeley? Where did you get the money?”

“Savings. Not that it’s any of your business.” Greeley had never in his life had any savings; he spent it so fast the money might be programmed to dissolve.

After he bought the car and she’d asked about the money, he started drinking even more and got louder and worse tempered, and that was when she’d gone down and talked with Mabel and had been so relieved when Mabel said she’d send out a patrol officer, get Greeley out before the neighbors started calling in complaints about him. Mabel had said it wouldn’t hurt Greeley to spend the night in a cell, that the captain kept a nice clean jail, and she’d sent Mavity back down the hall to that nice young Officer McFarland who’d helped her with the restraining order. Mavity had left the department feeling guilty that she’d really done it, but feeling a whole lot relieved, too.