Cat Pay The Devil

37

O nly now, in the early evening, had the accumulated July heat managed to penetrate to Clyde Damen’s patio; in this sheltered oasis, the high, plastered walls hoarded well the cooler night air. It seemed to Joe that the heat spell would never end; he felt as if the whole world was being smothered by a giant, sweaty hand. Pacing the top of the six-foot wall above the unlit barbecue, he watched Clyde hosing down the brick paving and the plaster benches. Only the outdoor cushions, piled on the porch, had escaped the soaking onslaught of the spray. As Clyde adjusted the hose to a gentler pressure and began watering the flowers in their raised planters, the tomcat sniffed with appreciation the cool, damp breath rising up to him.

“Game for a little shower?” Clyde said, flicking the spray in Joe’s direction.

“You want a set of claws in your backside? Only some idiot dog would want to play in the hose.” But immediately he was sorry he’d said that. Old Rube had loved the water, had loved to bite and leap at the hose. Together, Joe and Clyde glanced across the garden to Rube’s grave, and exchanged a hurting look. The big retriever had been put down just two months ago, and both man and cat still felt incomplete; they missed painfully the black Lab who had for so many years been a member of the family; every memory of Rube was distressing. But it was hard not to think of him, hard not to stir their memories.

Rube’s greatest passion had been to swim in the ocean, shouldering through the surf as strong and agile as a seal. Now, Joe’s remark had left Clyde so distressed that he turned off the hose, came over to the wall, and stood silently stroking Joe.

“I’m sorry,” Joe said.

“I know.” Clyde rubbed behind his ears. Joe could smell Clyde’s aftershave over the nose-tickling aroma of cold charcoal from the big barbecue; it was too hot this evening to build a fire for burgers or steaks or ribs, though a crowd would soon descend.

A cold supper waited in the kitchen, cold cracked crab, cold boiled shrimp, and an assortment of George Jolly’s succulent salads. Charlie and Wilma, as two of the guests of honor, had not been allowed to contribute a delicious casserole or salad as they usually did. Ryan, who would rather build houses than cook, was bringing the beer.

Clyde dried off the chairs and benches with a towel, and tossed the cushions back onto them. He had stepped into the house to bring out the big iced tubs of shrimp and crab when the doorbell rang and the unlocked front door opened; Joe could see in through the kitchen window and straight through to the living room where folks were crowding in, Dallas and Ryan and her sister Hanni, Max and Charlie, and behind them other cars were pulling up.

Everyone but Hanni was dressed in old worn jeans and cool cotton shirts; Ryan’s beautiful and flamboyant sister wore a low-cut black T-shirt and a long, flowered skirt, expensive sandals, and dangling silver earrings. No one ever said the two sisters were alike. Except in their lively attitude, Joe thought, admiring both women. The tomcat was amused that he had begun to notice people’s clothes in addition to people’s attitudes; that was Dulcie’s influence. It was true, though, that what people wore told a lot about them. Cats didn’t have that problem. Only the condition of one’s fur mattered, and that was more for the feel of it; scruffy fur was irritating and distracting.

Ryan wore ancient jeans, sandals, and a nice red T-shirt that set off her short, dark hair, her green Irish eyes and warm complexion. Wilma came in behind her, wearing red, too, Dulcie perched on her shoulder, the other guest of honor following.

Mandell Bennett was using a walker. He looked happy indeed to be out of the hospital, out of intensive care. His short dark hair was freshly trimmed, his print sport shirt still lined with creases from the store. He was laughing, his dark Cherokee eyes filled with pleasure. As people crowded through to the big kitchen, a tall thin man with carrot red hair came in behind Bennett. Mike Flannery was Ryan and Hanni’s father, and Chief U.S. Probation Officer in San Francisco. He was Bennett’s boss, and Wilma had worked for him before she retired. He had picked Bennett up at the hospital to drive him down from the city, a good excuse to get away for a few days and to see his family.

Lucinda and Pedric came in behind Flannery, the kit snuggled in Pedric’s arms. The thin old man was dressed in jeans, an open shirt, and a lightweight cotton sport coat. Lucinda wore a long cotton jumper over a light blouse. As people moved on through the kitchen in a tangle and out the back door, a dozen officers crowded in the front door, laughing. There was not a uniform among them, not even Detective Davis who, like blond Eleanor Sand, was wearing a long denim skirt and a T-shirt.

Ryan stopped to put a six-pack of beer in the crowded refrigerator in the space Clyde had left beside the bowls of deli salads. She handed her heavy cooler to Clyde, to carry down the back steps. Pedric came out behind her. As he passed the patio table where the crab and shrimp were bedded in ice, the tattercoat peered down, licking her whiskers.

Joe smiled at the look of satisfaction on Ryan’s face as she looked around Clyde’s patio, now as crowded and noisy and full of life as Ryan had intended when she designed it. She always seemed so pleased to see something she had designed and built put to its full use. Clyde, standing with his arm around her, pulled her close. The cats thought they made a warm, handsome couple.

But Joe had thought that about other women. He’d thought that about Charlie, had thought for sure Charlie and Clyde would marry-and she’d ended up falling in love with Max.

And as Dulcie had pointed out, when Clyde did get married, Joe himself would be evicted from the master suite; he was, after all, not an ordinary cat, and newlyweds did need some privacy.

No more king-size bed, no more waking Clyde in the middle of the night just for the pleasure of hearing him complain. No more direct route from bed to the rafters and out the cat door to his rooftop tower.

But, Joe thought, watching his friends celebrating, he’d think about that when the problem arose. He watched Eleanor Sand and Charlie, sitting off in a corner of the patio, on the bench beneath the maple tree. Eleanor’s arm was around Charlie, and Charlie looked weepy, very still and quiet-that shooting had upset her more than she’d let on to her friends.

Of course Max knew how deeply Charlie felt, as did Dallas and Davis. But Officer Sand had recently been through the same thing and, being young and not on the job too long, she, too, had had a bad reaction. Joe wanted to slip closer and listen, but when he caught Dulcie’s eye, he hastily turned away and leaped to the top of the wall beside her and the tortoiseshell kit. Across the patio, the three non-speaking household cats were up on the porch, close to the doggy door that would admit them quickly to their lair in the laundry if the party got too noisy. Two of the cats were growing elderly, and the young white cat had always been skittery and shy.

Everyone toasted Mandell, and then toasted Wilma and Charlie and made jokes at their expense. Mandell looked at Wilma. “Have to admit, this is a weird set of circumstances. Devil masks, ancient treasure…and I’m sure I haven’t heard the half of it.” He looked across at Max. “What was the outcome of Eddie Sears’s arraignment, wasn’t that yesterday? I was really out of the loop, in that hospital. What about Jones? Will he live to be arraigned?”

“Sears is up for two counts of kidnapping,” Max said. “Jones, hard to tell. He’s still in intensive care, and the prognosis is shaky.”

The three cats glanced at one another. They were not all of one mind on their preferences as to Jones’s fate. Joe was for a slow and painful death, before Jones cost the courts a bundle of money, trying and convicting, and then incarcerating him. Dulcie wanted Jones to face charges and endure a long, tedious, painful battle in court. Kit looked from Joe to Dulcie and wasn’t sure what she wanted. Just, she thought, whatever would cause Jones the most misery. A cat is not big on forgiveness. These two men had no compassion for human lives, and in their humble feline opinions the world would be safer without them.

“We have several interesting communications from Interpol,” Max said, “on thefts of pre-Columbian artifacts. When Wilma found some of that information on the Internet, we started making contacts.

“There were three burglaries from the Panamanian National Institute of Culture. At least one, early in 2003, was an inside job. A big haul of gold huacas and clay pots that could date back farther than two thousand years. The pieces were taken from the institute’s Reina Torres de Arauz Museum of Anthropology, from locked display cases. Nothing broken, not a lock damaged.”

Joe tried to think how long ago two thousand years really was, how many generations of ordinary cats that would be, but the magnitude of that many lifetimes made his head feel woozy. He knew that Dulcie could think in those terms more easily, at least when it had to do with their own mythical history. And the kit…She had grown up on ancient tales. Kit looked at ancient history as just yesterday. Joe watched the tortoiseshell as she peered down from a low branch of the maple behind Max, studying the pictures that had been faxed to him by Interpol. And Joe dropped to the bench beside Clyde where he, too, could see.

One picture seemed identical to the gold pendant he had hidden on the roof. There was a handwritten note in the margin, placing its value at over four thousand dollars. That little bit of gold…If Cage had stolen as much as would fill the floor safe in his basement, the value would be considerable. No wonder he’d been in a swivet when the pieces vanished.

He watched Kit, staring down from the branch at the pictures. Was she thinking that those gold huacas were very like ancient Celtic relics? Like the primitive gold jewelry and shields from Ireland and Wales that were so entwined with the myths about their own strange race of cats? But that stuff made Joe shiver; their own strange, mythical past made him unbearably nervous.

“The 2003 theft,” Max said, “had to be an inside job. No employee was supposed to have both the key and the combination, to any single display case. Obviously someone, or several people, did have them. One guard who had recently been employed, had a long record. He was out on bail when they hired him, waiting on appeal for an earlier job.”

“And they hired him?” Charlie said.

“This is Central America,” Max said. “Interesting that the theft occurred a month before they were to install a new security system.

“The museum had been hit a year earlier, and there was a theft in 1982. And that’s where we think this haul may have come from.” Max reached for another O’Doul’s. “Cage was in Panama in the eighties, as well as more recently.” He looked across at Wilma. “And Greeley Urzey was there in the eighties.”

Wilma said, “I don’t think Greeley, alone, has the skill to pull off that kind of job. But he and Cage might.”

Max nodded. “There were several illegal collections of pre-Columbian artifacts in Panama, held by wealthy individuals. Ownership is legal only for the museums. Interpol thinks those collectors bought huacas stolen from the museums, and that then, over the years, some of those collections were burglarized. That kind of theft, Cage and Greeley might have pulled off. And those thefts, of course, would never be reported.”

“How would they get them out of the country?” Lucinda asked.

“A lot of ways,” Max said. “Customs can’t check everything. They might have been sealed in moving containers, in those big overseas crates. Packed up by a mover in Panama or the Canal Zone and put on shipboard for transport to the U.S. Before 9/11, it would have been far easier to slip contraband through. But,” Max continued, “there’s a kicker to this. Late last night, we had a call from Seattle PD.

“Five stolen huacas have turned up there, sold by a San Francisco fence about a month ago.” He settled back, sipping his beer. “They were sold three days after Greeley’s flight got in from Panama-the day after Cage Jones was released from Terminal Island. We’re guessing Greeley flew into SFO, maybe under an assumed name. Cage meets him there, or maybe Greeley rents a car and picks Cage up at T.I. And Cage takes him to the San Francisco fence.”

The eyes of all three cats glowed. They glanced sideways at one another and found it hard to keep from grinning.

“But,” Mandell said, “if Cage sold his take in the city, what was he looking for at the Molena Point house? What disappeared from there, that he thought Wilma and I took?” He frowned, his dark eyes narrowing. “If Cage and Greeley made a large haul together and got it out of Panama, and then split it, that could have been Greeley’s half that they sold in the city.”

Max nodded. “That’s what we think.”

“And then,” Mandell said, “Greeley came after Cage’s half, which he hadn’t yet sold.”

“But why sell Greeley’s share so near the time that Cage got out of prison?” Wilma said. But then she smiled. “Greeley waited for Cage to get out, to make the contact for him. Greeley isn’t very sophisticated when it comes to that kind of thing, it’s Cage who knows the high-powered fences.”

Pedric said, “If they sold Greeley’s share, and Cage’s half was still in the house, did Greeley find and take it?”

Max shook his head. “We don’t think so. Greeley was in there after the kidnappings, snooping around. If he’d already found and taken it, why would he go back?”

“And what about the three murders?” Lucinda said. “They weren’t connected to this, at all? You arrested one man, the husband?” she said with distaste.

“Two,” Max said. “Tucker and Keating. We had enough evidence on both to make good cases. And in the Milner death, we have the murder weapon. We were able to lift one print that he missed when he wiped it.”

“Then-” Lucinda began.

“Milner’s skipped,” Max said. “Parked his car at San Jose airport, made a plane reservation, but we don’t think he boarded. He’ll be picked up-we hope he will. He’s not too sophisticated.”

Max said no more, nor did Dallas. Neither officer mentioned the plastered-over and painted baseboard in the Milner case, the paintbrush, the caulking tube found in the neighbor’s garbage. Until the trial, it was best to keep such information to themselves, even among those close to the department. The fewer who knew, the fewer slips could be made. The cats glanced at one another, Dulcie twitched a whisker, and again Joe Grey smiled.

“And there never was a burglar,” Lucinda said.

“None.” Max grinned. “You’re safe in your bed, Lucinda.” He looked around at Clyde. “I’m starved. One more toast to the three guests of honor, then let’s eat.”

But before Max raised his glass, Charlie said, “I think there’s another guest of honor who helped stop Cage Jones.”

The cats went rigid, staring at Charlie.

“Seems to me,” Charlie said, “that a toast to Rock is in order. The poor guy ran his tail off tracking me.” Joe and Dulcie and Kit went limp. Charlie’s eyes met theirs, laughing, then moved on, her look noticed only by those who knew the whole story. And as Charlie knelt to hug Rock and give him a treat of shrimp, the cats knew he deserved every morsel. Joe smugly washed his whiskers, and Dulcie rolled over on her back, purring. And soon everyone gathered around the table, filling their plates with the good shrimp and crab, Jolly’s seafood so fresh it might be still swimming, the salads crisp and well seasoned, the French bread freshly baked, the desserts rich, just as the cats liked them. Rock and the cats, the household cats, too, all had their own plates; Kit ate so much, ending with a lovely bowl of crème brulée, that Lucinda and Pedric were sure she’d be sick before they got her home.

But Kit wasn’t sick, she reveled in the evening, loved having all her friends around her, cat and human; after her lonely, bullied kittenhood, she loved being part of this warm human world. When late that evening the friends parted, heading for their cars, and Ryan lingered for a last drink with Clyde, Kit sat on the seat, between the old couple, talking nonstop; she wanted all the answers that had not yet come to light, she wanted it all at once.

She wanted not only to know all the final resolutions to the several cases in question, which no one on earth could yet tell her, but also she worried over her wild friends who had so courageously helped Charlie and Wilma. She worried about Willow and Cotton and Coyote living wild, and she envied them, too. She knew they would choose no other way. Wound tight, Kit talked nonstop until the old couple had tucked her into bed between them and turned out the light, and then she fell asleep all at once, purring.

Kit’s frustration notwithstanding, the answers did come, the first, early the following morning. Kit woke to the ringing of the phone. She rolled over on the big bed as Lucinda picked up. Lucinda listened, then turned on the speaker so Pedric and Kit could listen.

“Cage Jones died at four this morning,” Wilma said. “The hospital called Max, and Charlie called me. She was crying.”

“Oh dear,” Lucinda said, swinging out of bed and feeling for her slippers. Beside her, Kit shivered. Charlie had killed a man and, no matter how casual a cat might feel about taking another creature’s life, Charlie was a tender human.

“What can we do?” Lucinda said.

“She’ll be all right,” Wilma said. “She’s strong, it just takes time. She knows very well that she saved lives that night. Max said that as soon as he can get away they’re going to saddle up and take that week’s ride down the coast that they’ve been planning, take some time alone together.”

That same day, Violet Jones moved back into her childhood home with Lilly, and found a part-time job waiting tables. And it was later that week that Greeley Urzey left the village, just disappeared, didn’t tell Mavity he was going. “Just like him,” Mavity said. “He shows up, makes trouble, and vanishes.” Greeley checked out of his motel at five A.M., the day after Cage’s fence, in San Francisco, ID’d Cage and Greeley as having sold him illegal gold huacas. The fence had studied pictures from Interpol that identified the pieces he’d bought as having been stolen in several Panamanian burglaries. When federal officers went to arrest Greeley, he was gone. He had sold his car two days before to a private party. If he got on a plane, he’d used a fake ID. The feds were still looking for his trail on the day of Cage Jones’s funeral, which was delayed while forensics determined whether Max’s.38 or shotgun pellets had killed Cage, though the question was academic. It was a week before the funeral when Lilly Jones disappeared.

Violet called Wilma to say that Lilly was gone. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t know why Lilly had left; she said they’d been getting along just fine. Her voice was stiff, but Wilma thought that, secretly, she was pleased. She told Wilma that Lilly’s bank account had been closed and that she had left a large check, telling Violet to open her own account in order to pay future household bills. Lilly’s note said there was no mortgage, and that, with Cage’s death, Violet owned half the house. That she would have to pay the taxes, and insurance, and upkeep. Lilly did not leave a forwarding address. She took only a few clothes and the one good suitcase. She explained that Violet couldn’t sell the house, of course, without Lilly, but that if Lilly decided to release her half, she would send a legal paper to that effect. She did not take the old Packard, but transferred the registration to Violet. She did not make airline reservations under her own name.

There were no charges against Lilly Jones. But Max gave the information to Interpol. Violet, when she checked with the bank to be sure Lilly’s account was indeed closed, learned that Lilly had also relinquished her large safe-deposit box. At this time, two abused village women left their homes, seeking shelter and protection, and Violet, while waiting tables at the Patio Café, toyed with the idea of taking in such women as roomers, for mutual support. She thought about this during Cage’s graveside service, which she witnessed apparently without emotion, turning away when it was finished, dry-eyed and composed.

Hidden among the tombstones behind Violet and the few others present, the three cats waited. The morning was hot, overcast, and muggy. The service was short. Lilly’s minister did not seem inclined to go on at much length about the life or virtues of Cage Jones. The selections he read from the Bible were blandly generic. Violet spoke no words of cleansing or of memory on Cage’s behalf. Cage Jones’s funeral was a glum affair. In the arrangements Lilly had made for it before she vanished, she seemed concerned only about doing the minimum civil duty and being done with her brother. The cats, curled up in the shadow of a nearby granite monument, looked sadly at one another. To possess human life, and to have so squandered it that one departed accompanied only by hatred or indifference-that was, in their eager feline minds, indeed a terrible waste. They felt no grief for Cage Jones; they felt only disgust. What each of them wondered about, and grieved over, was the emptiness and waste.

They watched Wilma and Charlie turn away and leave the cemetery with Max and Dallas, watched Violet leave alone. When the handful of people was gone, they waited patiently until the backhoe had arrived and the grave was unceremoniously covered with earth, and then sod laid over it.

Then, alone, Joe Grey approached the grave.

And now, smiling with a sad but perverse sense of humor, the tomcat dug a hole in the center of Cage Jones’s grave, dug it in the soft dirt, as any cat would dig, but carefully between the squares of sod. He dug it deep. He dropped the leather thong, which he had carried all the way to the cemetery secure between his teeth, dangling the heavy gold devil-dropped it deep into the hole and buried it, covered it well, as any cat would do.

And he turned away, smiling, leaving Cage Jones alone with his only remaining treasure.