Cat Playing Cupid

18

DESPITE DULCIE'S DISAPPROVAL of the plan she was there the next evening waiting for Joe, crouched on the roof above the Wolf/Gibbs second-floor condo as the tomcat, sucking in his belly in a forlorn charade of starving stray, of dejected homelessness, prepared to charm his way into enemy territory.

The small, five-condo complex was tucked atop a row of village shops, the apartments surrounding a small roof garden that could be reached from the street below or from the underground parking garage by elevator, or by a stairway whose narrow steps were faced with bright, hand-decorated tiles. The views from the condos were of the village rooftops, of the small shops and cafés below and the sea beyond. The Wolf/Gibbs unit faced Ocean Avenue with a private balcony overlooking that wide, divided street and its tree-shaded median.

This evening the sliding glass doors to the balcony stood open to catch the breeze, and through them drifted the voice of a national anchor, treating pedestrians on the street below to the early evening news. Joe, padding silently across the condo roof, left Dulcie beneath the branches of an overhanging oak and dropped down to the balcony where he peered in through the sliding screen.

Ray and Ryder had made short work of moving in. The living room furniture was already in place, and the happy couple sat on the couch having a drink and watching the overwrought commentator. The entire room looked as if it had been decorated by Rent-A-Center, Ray and Ryder taking advantage of a discount for the shopworn condition of the oversize off-white upholstered pieces and the matching white coffee and end tables flamboyant in design and scarred from frequent use. A vase of artificial mauve roses graced the ornate coffee table.

The couple seemed entranced by the news, with the latest lurid details of the latest high-profile murder, this one a multibillionaire widow found dead in her Rio de Janeiro penthouse. They were drinking something pink and tall with little flowered umbrellas tilting to the sides of their glasses, a drink that was highly amusing in the big hand of sweaty Ray Gibbs with his two-day growth of beard, his black jeans, and his black T-shirt emblazoned with a skull. Holding the delicate glass in meaty fingers, he laughed at the news shots of the murdered woman's bloody body. Joe watched him with disgust and an unwelcome fear as he decided how to play this hand; crouching even this close to Gibbs made his paws sweat.

Should he finesse the sliding screen open and stroll on in, boldly treating the couple to his macho charm? He'd known several ordinary cats to handily open a screen door. Or should he push his nose at the screen and give out with the pitiful mewls, cringe, and play frightened kitty? See if a gentle stroke and a kind word were forthcoming-or a thrown shoe? He paused, debating, looking Gibbs over.

Ray Gibbs was a handsome man fast going to seed; he looked to Joe like a heavy drinker, with his cheeks starting to puff and his eyes baggy. He was maybe forty-five, about six two, well set up, but soft around the middle. His dark hair, though not excessively long, was ragged and could stand a good trim. What did young, well-turned-out, glamour-conscious Ryder Wolf see in the creep?

Money? Or maybe Gibbs was really good in bed? Whatever the case, the longer Joe watched him, the more he disliked the man-and the more certain he was that he didn't want to barge brazenly in and lock heads with that hulk.

Maybe better to win Ryder over first, try to get her on his side, though he didn't think she'd be a pushover. He glanced up at the roof, at Dulcie's dark silhouette in the shadows of the oak branches. Her green eyes were intent on him. Taking heart from her claw-quick backup, knowing his lady was a tiger in a fight, he moved into the path of light that fell through the living room sliders, dropped his ears and sucked in his gut again, and let out a weak and tremulous mewl. A faint and frightened cry that neither Gibbs nor Ryder heard, apparently, over the loud deodorant commercial that now demanded their attention.

He tried again, louder, a plea so pitiful that Joe almost felt sorry for himself.

This time Ryder heard him. She half-rose, staring toward the door. "What's that? What the hell is that?"

Gibbs turned to look. "A squirrel or something. What the hell's it doing at the door?"

When Joe mewled again, Gibbs grabbed a folded newspaper. "A damn cat!" he said and headed fast for the screen.

"Mewwwoooooww," Joe cried pitifully, crouched and subservient but tensed to run like hell. In one move Ray shoved the sliding screen back and swung the paper-but Ryder was behind him. She grabbed his arm. "Wait, Ray. Look at it, it's starving."

"It ain't starving, look at that gut."

Look at your own gut, Joe thought, primed to run as Gibbs towered over him.

"Oh, the pitiful thing." Ryder knelt and reached out to him. Which only went to prove, after all, that you couldn't always judge human character by a person's response to an animal in distress.

"Come on, kitty," Ryder said in a high, fake voice. Joe cringed and shivered. "Oh, look at him, Ray, he's pitiful. And you've scared the poor thing."

Hiding a smile, Joe rubbed against Ryder's ankles, followed her into the living room and, at her baby talk and beckoning, followed her straight through to the kitchen. Ray stood watching them, scowling and fidgeting as if he'd like to get his hands on the damned cat.

In the kitchen Ryder poured milk into a bowl and set it on the floor. Joe was not a big fan of milk, and this milk was fat free, thin, blue, and disgusting. He lapped it up as heartily as he could, trying to look grateful, making a mighty effort to purr as he choked it down.

He cleaned the bowl as a starving cat should, wanting to upchuck the disgusting liquid, then followed her back to the living room and jumped on the couch close to her, prepared to snuggle down and treat her to a session of grateful purrs.

Ray, with one hard swat, slapped him to the floor.

Ryder looked angrily at Ray, but she made no objection. "Cats on the floor," she told Joe sternly, shaking her finger at him-one minute kitty's best friend, the next minute to hell with the cat as she submissively knuckled under to her lover. Joe looked at her narrowly but, remembering his mission, switched on the pitiful again, rolled over on the carpet looking up at her-and putting himself farther away from Gibbs.

Ryder leaned down, stroked him, and gave him the baby talk. "Leave him alone, Ray, he's not hurting anything." But she didn't invite Joe back on the couch.

For the next hour Ryder was all sugar to the stray kitty, leaning down every few minutes between sips of her fresh drink to pet him as if to apologize for Ray's rude treatment. Ray looked so annoyed that Joe wondered just how much information he'd be able to collect before this guy tried to strangle him.

But then, as darkness drew down and the glow of shop lights shone up from the street, Ray started talking about dinner and soon the couple left the couch, to dress. Joe, waiting impatiently for them to get out of there and leave him to search the place, could see into the bedroom and could hear them talking about an evening on the town, and that suited the tomcat just fine.

He watched Ryder shimmy into a short black dress, pulling it down over black panties and bra. Ray seemed to think that straightening his black T-shirt and brushing off his jeans was all the cleaning up necessary-that, and pulling on a pair of lethal-looking black boots with metal toes that could kill a cat with one kick.

Just before they left the condo, Ryder called the kitty into the kitchen again, where she unwrapped half a cold hamburger, scraped off the mustard and onions, broke it up, and put it on a paper towel on the floor next to a stack of packed moving boxes. "You be a good kitty, okay?"

"You're not leaving that cat inside. Put it out, Ryder, before it makes a mess and stinks up the place."

"He has no home, Ray, or he wouldn't be here. It's getting cold out. Look at how beautiful he is, just the color of that silver satin dress you bought me." She looked up at Ray, batting her mascaraed lashes. "Someone's dumped the poor thing, or has moved away and abandoned him."

"The way Nina left me," Ray said. His laugh made Joe shiver.

"We can leave the balcony door open," Ryder said, "so he can go out if he needs to. No one's going to climb in here over the roofs. And what would they take?"

Ray glanced toward the bedroom, scowled at her as if she'd lost her mind. But he left the sliding screen cracked open, turning once to stare at the apparently sleeping tomcat, a hate-filled look that made Joe's fur crawl. The moment they were gone out the front door Joe was up again, ready to toss the place.

Padding out the open slider to the edge of the terrace, he peered down between the decorative wrought-iron rails watching them cross Ocean and turn in at the first restaurant that had a bar. When they'd disappeared he reentered the apartment, heading first for the bedroom where he could see several stacks of movers' boxes jammed in the corners and around the door, all apparently sealed tight.

He didn't much want to shred the tape and rip the boxes open, leaving awkward evidence. First, he tossed the room, clawing open the drawers in the nightstand and dresser looking for letters, for anything with hand printing like the letter Ryder had brought to the station. They hadn't unpacked much. He found a wadded-up grocery list in a neat, cursive handwriting; he prowled the closet and its high shelf, searched under the bed and behind the pillows, and under and between the mattress and box spring as deep as he could reach. He left the sealed cartons for the moment and headed for the kitchen, where the boxes were already open.

Yes, five cartons stood on the floor by the dinette table, their flaps loose but still filled with dishes and pots and pans jumbled together with cans of food and a few articles of clothing that had been used as packing, and that smelled of Ryder's musky perfume and of Ray's sweat. Did Ryder intend to put all this directly in the cupboards, or did she mean to wash them first? No cat would eat food smelling of human sweat, to say nothing of human feet.

Burrowing down into the nearest box, he knew this venture was a real long shot. And yet…What if he did find the same hand printing-or found a gun?

The odds were great against finding a gun in this tangle-and greater still that it would be the murder weapon after all these years. Ridiculous odds. And yet…That twitching sense of needing to do this kept the tomcat digging.

He was tunneling between bottles of cleaning liquids, trying not to spill any on himself, when he found, tucked among a stack of Ryder's hastily folded sweaters, a small box of linen stationery, its lid embossed with a logo and with BARTON'S FINEST LINEN-WEAVE LETTER PAPER, SINGLE FOLD. Pawing off the lid, excitement making his fur twitch, he inspected the envelopes and felt his heart pound. This looked like the same kind of paper as Ryder's letter, and when he eased the envelopes aside, the pages with their rough edges looked to be an exact match. Same color, same weave, same feathered borders. So good a match that he wanted to yowl with success-fate had smiled on him, big time.

Or he hoped it had.

With velveted paws, trying not to leave claw marks or paw prints, he worked the lid back onto the box then eased the box into one of Ray's T-shirts, wishing, as he so often did, that he had opposing thumbs for these complicated maneuvers.

But with agile claws, and using his teeth, he managed to twist the ends of the shirt into a crude knot. Dragging his smelly package through the condo and out onto the balcony, he crouched beneath the overhanging oak. And, with the knot of the T-shirt clenched tight between his teeth, he leaped up the trunk, dragging his burden between his forelegs. He climbed awkwardly, the bundle scraping along under his belly. One last leap, from the tree to the roof, the package swinging precariously over empty space, and Dulcie reached out with fast claws and snatched it-and snatched Joe, too, to safety. He landed in her face, the package between them.

She nosed at the T-shirt, grimacing at the smell, but clawing with curiosity at the knot Joe had tied. "It stinks, Joe. Stinks of Ray Gibbs."

"Couldn't help it. Look what's inside-it's the stationery. At least, it looks the same as what Ryder said she found."

"Oh, my. If it is, we have proof she was lying."

"But it isn't enough," Joe said.

"But if it's the same, if it can prove that Ryder wrote the letter-"

"Forgery, if that's what the letter turns out to be, isn't evidence of murder." He looked at her intently. There was a sample of Nina's handwriting in the cold file, but could that help identify hand printing? "I want to find the gun, Dulcie. I'm going back in. There are open boxes I can get through in a hurry, and then a whole stack of unopened ones." Dragging the dark package beneath the oak's overhanging limbs and out of sight, he said, "If I can open those boxes from underneath and crawl up into them, maybe they won't notice for a while."

She peered over the edge of the roof to the patio's open door. "I'll come, it'll be faster." And she crouched to leap down.

Joe stopped her with his teeth in her shoulder.

"Come on, Joe, before they get back."

"If you come, we won't have a lookout," Joe said reasonably. "If Kit were here instead of-"

"Well, she isn't," Dulcie said shortly. "Come on. We can listen for them." And as they leaped down to the balcony, she said, "How could that slob Gibbs be an accountant? That's a respectable profession, or supposed to be."

Joe padded to the rail again, scanning the village for any sign of the absent couple.

"Gibbs owned half the firm," Dulcie said, pausing by the open screen, "but he looks and talks like he just wandered in off skid row."

"Whatever Gibbs is, Chappell is up there in Oregon, apparently shot twice, and if we can find the gun…"

"If he has a gun, won't he be carrying it?"

"You don't think he'd carry the same gun, do you? If he gets caught with that one on him…If he has that gun, Dulcie, it'll be hidden somewhere."

Dulcie looked at his determined scowl, refrained from pointing out that the murder had been nearly ten years ago, that a lot of gun trading could occur in ten years, and slipped beside him into the condo, through the open screen.