Cat Pay The Devil

6

D ulcie didn’t see Greeley Urzey as she raced across the roofs above him; she was too preoccupied. It’s nearly dusk. She will be home! No need to call the sheriff in Gilroy, she’ll be in the bedroom unpacking her overnight case and that thin little hanger bag. She probably stopped in the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee or make a drink, and she’s wondering where I am. Right this minute she’s home and everything is as it should be!

There! Her own shake roof, where she sunned, where she caught birds. And lights on in the kitchen! Yes! She couldn’t see the bedroom windows, but she could see the reflection of their lights across the hill that rose close behind the house. And even as she looked, lights came on in the living room, reflecting across the oak trees beneath her; leaping down the oak to her own driveway, she smelled car exhaust. Oh, the wonderful perfume of that ugly exhaust stink-tonight it smelled as sweet as catnip. Madly she bolted in through her cat door, all purrs and mewls and wanting to shout Wilma’s name.

But something stopped her. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, very still. Something wasn’t right-the wrong smells, and when she reared up to stare at the tops of the counters and the tabletop, fear filled her. She leaped to a chair, looking. Wilma never left the kitchen like this. A mess of smeared jam and butter mixed with toast crumbs. The bread out of the bread box, its wrapper ripped raggedly and three slices of bread left to dry among the crumbs; the half-full juice bottle on the sink, its lid missing; the tub of butter atop the toaster, lid off, the butter smeared with crumbs and jam.

But when she peered through to the dining room, the dining room table was piled with bags from Liz Claiborne, Chico’s, all Wilma’s favorite shops. Had Wilma dropped her packages and, very hungry, stopped for a hasty piece of toast before she unpacked, and left that mess behind her? Dulcie cocked her ears toward the bedroom, listening.

The house was deathly still. She started to shiver. Had someone been in here when Wilma got home? Someone who’d hidden and waited…?

Dropping silently to the floor, she slipped toward the living room-and stopped: the scent of strangers, two men. And the living room had been trashed, the couch cushions thrown to the floor, Wilma’s beautiful Jeannot landscape rudely jerked from its hook and jammed against a bookcase. The Persian rug was flipped back at three corners-as if the burglars thought there might be a hidden safe sunk in the floor? And the rug scuffed up into folds where Wilma’s lovely cherry desk had been shoved away from the window, all the drawers pulled out and tossed in a heap, their contents a jumble-bankbook, erasers, pencils on top of a tangle of files marked CDS, STOCKS, and BONDS. One man’s smell was all over the files, his testosterone-heavy scent overlaid with the stink of greasy potato chips.

Now she knew how their friend Kate Osborne had felt when her San Francisco apartment was broken into and ransacked; the same shock of invasion, of being defiled, a hot tide of helplessness and rage.

But the burglar in Kate’s apartment had been after jewels, searching for a rich inheritance that Kate had not, then, known the true value of. Wilma had nothing like that. A silver hair clip, one or two small precious stones, and the one valuable hair clip Kate had given her-but not enough to warrant this kind of search. And, what about the packages? If Wilma’s purchases were here, so was Wilma. Or, she had been.

Dulcie’s paws were sweating, her mouth dry. Trying to steady herself, she sniffed all across the floor searching for Wilma’s fresh scent, but she found only the sour smell of the two men. When she paused again to listen, she heard from the bedroom a drawer being pulled out softly, then a man’s hushed voice, low and angry…“It’s not here…”

Silently she padded into the hall that connected Wilma’s bedroom and the guest room, pausing in the shadows at more thumps, and a second man’s voice-and she glimpsed a broad figure that made her draw back. That was Cage Jones. It had to be-he was just as Wilma had described him. And was Wilma in there, held captive? Swallowing back terror, Dulcie tensed to leap at him…

She knew she should spin around and go for help. She was no match for Jones, he was huge. If he killed her, there would be no one to help Wilma. But she had to see. She was slipping through the shadows toward the beefy man when she heard her plastic cat door swing and flap. Terrified they’d hear, she spun around…

The tortoiseshell kit stood behind her, her yellow eyes widening at Dulcie’s soft hiss for silence. When the voices came again, Kit dropped to the carpet, backing away in alarm.

Dulcie, creeping to the door, could not smell Wilma. She peered in, saw the two men. Wilma wasn’t there. She slipped away with Kit, to the living room, where Kit licked Dulcie’s ear just as, so many times in the past, Dulcie had comforted the tortoiseshell.

“Who are they?” Kit asked. “The burglars who killed that woman in the middle of the night? Oh…”

“It’s Cage Jones,” Dulcie whispered. “He shot Wilma’s partner this morning.”

“Mandell? Oh, he didn’t shoot Mandell Bennett! How…?”

“He’s alive. Intensive care.” Bennett had been to Wilma’s house only a few times, but he was gentle in the way he spoke and stroked a cat, was the kind of human a cat liked and remembered.

“We need help,” Dulcie said, glancing at the phone that had, surprisingly, not been knocked off the hook; its receiver was still in place-but if they called 911, Jones would see the extension’s red light blinking in the bedroom. For several years, Wilma had had a second line for her computer, with two-line extensions where a red light blinked when one line was in use. That light would be a dead giveaway.

But what if Wilma was in there, and hurt, maybe tied up in the closet? Abandoning the phone, the cats headed back for the bedroom, Dulcie thinking, So what if they see us? We’re cats! What’re they’re going to do? Shoot a couple of house cats mindlessly looking for our supper?