Cat Raise The Dead

14

The patio doors were securely closed and partly obscured by the drawn draperies. Dillon could feel her heart pounding as she pressed her face against the glass, cupping her hands-and ramming the cat's face against the doorframe. Growling, he backed away as if to jump, but she grabbed the nape of his neck. "I'm sorry, Joe Cat, you have to stay here." She stroked him and hugged him, and he settled down again. He was really a good cat. She rubbed his ears, then cupped her hands once more to peer in.

The room showed no sign of life, no lamp burned, no TV picture flickering, no figure moving about or seated in a chair reading. She could see a dresser and a chair, and a bed neatly made up with a white spread, its corners tucked at exact angles. There were no clothes lying around, nothing personal, no glasses or book or newspaper, not a stray shoe, not even a wadded tissue. The surfaces of the dresser and nightstand were bare. The room was definitely empty.

Mama said they charged a bundle to stay here at Casa Capri. So why would they keep a room empty, even for the reason Eula gave? She was so intent on the room that when Joe turned to nibble a flea, jerking around to bite his shoulder, she grabbed at him again, startled.

Pressing him against her cheek, she looked behind her, glancing toward the social room. Making sure no one was watching, she tried the door, testing the latch while pretending to smell the blooms on the lemon tree.

It was locked. Well she'd known it would be. She tugged and jerked to be sure, then turned away.

Moving on down the brick walk close to the row of glass doors, she paused to look in through each, searching for a familiar face, for Jane's tall straight figure, and knowing she wouldn't find her.

At home, the minute she and her folks had gotten back from living in Dallas after their year away, the minute they pulled in the drive, with the car still loaded with suitcases, she had run up the street to Jane's house. They'd lived in Dallas while Dad did a special project at the university, and she'd really missed Jane, specially after Jane stopped writing to her, because at first they'd written every week. Four times while they were living in Texas she'd tried to call Jane, but there was never any answer. Mama tried twice, and then Jane's phone was disconnected, and she didn't know what had happened. By then it was time to come home, so Mama told her to wait, that she'd see Jane soon. But she hadn't seen her; when she got home, Jane was gone.

That afternoon, when they pulled into the drive and she ran down the block, there was the FOR SALE sign pounded into the lawn in Jane's yard. And all the curtains drawn. The neighbor said Jane was in Casa Capri with a stroke and that a trust officer was selling the house.

She had run home, gotten her bike, and come up here to Casa Capri, but they said Jane was too sick to see anyone. They said children weren't allowed in the Nursing wing because of germs. They weren't very nice about it.

As she moved down the patio beside the glass doors, Joe Cat began to wriggle. Though his whiskers tickled her ear, he was being really careful not to dig in his claws. The old people sitting in their rooms watching TV made her sad; they looked so lonely and dried up.

Jane wouldn't be watching TV-she'd be reading or doing exercises or out walking, shopping in the village, maybe buying some little trinket; she loved the antique stores. Jane might be wrinkled, but she'd never be old like these people. Moving along, peering in through the glass, she approached the end of the patio, where sunlight slanted in through the panes across the carpets and beds, across the unmoving old folks as though they were statues-virtual reality that didn't move, figures in stage sets, like the animal dioramas in the museum. Each old person looked back at her, but no one changed expression, no one smiled. One old man sat propped in a reclining chair, sound asleep, with his mouth open, under a bright reading lamp. She was never going to get old.

She knew that the Nursing rooms were directly behind this row of rooms. The second time she came up on her bike, she'd tried to get in there, had gone around to the little street in the back between the main building and the retirement cottages. She'd tried to go in that door directly to Nursing, but it was locked. She'd looked in the windows of the rooms, and they were like those in a hospital, with metal beds and IV stands and bedpans. And then today, when she went down the hall and tried to get into Nursing, that nurse made her go back. She didn't see why everything was so secret, and everyone so grumpy. Unless there was something to hide. And that was what she meant to find out.

Before she started back up the third side she sat down on a bench beneath an orange tree and pulled Joe Cat off her shoulder down into her lap, petted him until he lay down. She supposed it was hard for a cat to be so still. She'd like to let him loose, but she'd been told not to. She could imagine him scorching away up a tree and over the roof and gone, and it would be her fault.

That first time when she came to see Jane and she told Mama they wouldn't let her in, Mama called Jane's trust officer. He said Jane was too sick to have company, and that was the policy here, that they allowed no visitors into Nursing, that only the family could come.

He said Mama could take his word that Jane was doing as well as could be expected, whatever that meant, and that he was in constant touch with the doctor who cared for Casa Capri's patients. And Mama believed him. With Mama going back to work, she didn't have time to go up to Casa Capri and raise a little hell, which Mama really could do when she wanted.

Mama's office, the real-estate office where she worked before she took leave of absence to go to Dallas, wanted her back right away. Three people were out sick, and the office was having a Major Panic. And after that, Mama hardly had time to pee. She did the laundry at midnight, or left it for Dillon and Dad, and they ate takeout most nights, or Dad made spaghetti. All you could hear around the house was "deeds" and "balloon loans" and "termite inspections" until even Dad was tired of it. Mama did talk to the doctor, though, and he said exactly the same thing, that Jane was too sick for visitors, and she was getting excellent care at Casa Capri.

Any sensible child, Mama said, would believe the combined word of several responsible grown-ups.

But she didn't. She didn't believe any of them.

Sliding Joe back onto her shoulder, she rose, catching her hair in a branch of the orange tree. Working it loose, she almost let Joe leap away, but then he settled down again, nosing at her hair, and began to purr. She hated her hair black. But if she'd come up here with red hair again, the nurses would have recognized her. Everyone remembered red hair.

Freeing her ugly black hair, petting Joe Cat, she moved toward the third wing of the building that would lead back to the social room. Moving along the row of mostly open glass doors, she tried the screens.

The third screen was unlocked, and the room empty. Dillon slipped inside.

"Just a little look around, Joe Cat. Who's to care?"

He purred louder, and seemed to be looking, too.

This was a man's room, a pair of boxer shorts tossed on the chair, a man's shoes under the dresser, and that made her sort of uncomfortable. Across the unmade bed lay a rough navy blue robe, and on the dresser beside a little radio, was a pile of paperback books with covers of tigers, grizzly bears, and half-naked women. When she opened the closet, his slacks and shirts hung loosely and smelled sour. Closing the closet again, she slipped on through the too-warm room and out into the hall, turning down toward Nursing.

The door at the end of the hall was locked. She pushed, and pushed harder, then turned away.

Moving back up the hall she inspected every room she could get into, slipping quickly from one side of the hall to the other. She and Jane used to read Alice in Wonderland, where Alice tried all the doors, like this, never sure what she would find inside.

But there was no magic mushroom here to make her a different size and maybe give her special powers.

The lady's clothes in one room were all purple, purple satin robe, purple slippers, a lavender nightie tangled on the floor. On the nightstand a stack of romance novels teetered beside a vase of purple artificial flowers, their faded petals icky with dust. She picked up a worn paperback and read a few lines where it flopped open. And dropped it, her face burning.

Did old people read this stuff?

She wanted to look again, but she didn't dare. Reading that stuff, even in front of a cat, made her feel too embarrassed. And strange; she could feel Joe Cat peering over her shoulder staring.

What was he staring at?

She put the book back on the pile and left the room quickly, before someone caught her here.

She thought the occupant of the next room must be moving in or out. At least all her possessions were in boxes. Shoe boxes were neatly lined up on the dresser, and bigger boxes lined up on the floor, all stuffed with sweaters and books, with little packets of letters tied together with ribbon, with lace hankies and little china animals wrapped in tissue. This room faced the outside of the building, toward a narrow terrace.

At the outer edge of the terrace ran a tall wrought-iron fence, separating it from the lawn and garden beyond. Farther away rose the oak grove, and in the wood among the shadowed trees a figure moved swiftly, rolling along in a wheelchair, her short gray hair lifting in the breeze, her chair pulled by the big brown poodle. The dog trotted along happily, pulling her, the two of them looking so free, as if they never had to come back inside Casa Capri. She pretended that the woman was Jane. But of course that woman was Bonnie Dorriss's mother. Dillon turned away, feeling lonely.

Each patio was separated from the next by a low stucco wall, with an open space at the end so you could walk from one patio to the next. But when she tried the wrought-iron gates that led outside, they were all locked.

All our nurses are required to carry keys, that's what Ms. Prior said. The wrought-iron fence ended just where Nursing began, turning at right angles to join the building. The Nursing wing went on beyond. Its wall had only high, tiny windows. There was one outer door, like the emergency exit door in a movie theater. From this, a line of muddy wheelchair tracks led away, cutting across the grass and across the concrete walk to the blacktop parking lot. The nine cars in the lot looked new and expensive.

She stroked the tomcat lightly. "I never told them my name. When I was here before, I told them my name was Kathy.

"Jane Hubble was my friend ever since I was seven. We read the Narnia books together, and she took me horseback riding my first time and talked Mama into letting me have riding lessons.

"Jane let me ride Bootsie, too." She sighed. "That trust officer sold Bootsie. I hope he got a nice home. I wish my folks could have bought him, but no one told us, no one called us when Jane got sick."

Joe yawned in her face and wiggled into a new position. She was sure he'd like to run and chase a bird. When he started squirming again, she gripped the nape of his neck. "I can't let you loose, I promised. Please, just stay quiet a little while longer, then we'll go back to Eula." She gave him a sidelong look. "Eula will love holding you."

She left the row of terraces, moving back inside to the hall, and wandered up the hall in the direction of the social room, stopping to check each open room. Hoping maybe she'd see something of Jane's in one of the rooms, a sweater, a book. But she knew she wouldn't.

"Somehow, Joe Cat, I have to get into Nursing. Find Jane for myself-if Jane is there."

Joe was, he thought, maintaining a high level of patience considering that he hated being carried, particularly by a child, and that prowling these small cluttered rooms where lonely old folks waited out their last years, was infinitely depressing. He might tell himself that he took a realistic view of getting old, that getting old was just part of living, but this Casa Capri gig was more tedious than he cared to admit.

As for Dillon playing detective, whatever the kid was up to with her intense search for Jane Hubble, the project had begun to wear. He felt as nervous as fleas on a hot griddle. By the time they returned to the social room he was ready to pitch a fit, so strung out that he actually welcomed being dropped down into Eula Weems's lap. Maybe if he just lay still, he could get himself together.

It was not until late that night, as he and Dulcie hunted across the moonlit hills, that he learned more about Dillon's missing friend. And that he began to wonder if Jane Hubble, and maybe those five other old folks, really had disappeared.