Cat Striking Back

11

A SLAB OF BARK flipped off the tree as Joe backed down. He nearly lost his grip and went slithering down as clumsy as a drunken squirrel. He hit the ground running, leaped into Charlie’s SUV through the open driver’s door, jumped across her, and landed on the seat. He looked up at her smugly, as if he’d planned that acrobatic descent. She hid a grin, gunned the engine, and took off.

From the top of the tree he had watched Ryan running down the lower road, chasing the white car, had glimpsed flashes of white among the foliage as it slipped away to disappear beyond the pines. Ryan was making good time. Straining to see, he’d glimpsed the car turning left at Ocean, up toward Highway 1. By then, he could no longer see Ryan but he could hear the faint echo of her racing footsteps. A startled crow screamed, a harsh and affronted cry as she passed beneath him. Behind her, Clyde ’s yellow roadster flashed into view, racing to catch up with her and stay on the guy’s tail.

Now, Charlie made the same U-turn, heading down the hill. “Did you see him turn? Did you see which way?”

“Left, toward the freeway,” Joe said. “I hope it was the same white car.” He looked over at her, frowning. “What good is this? A red SUV and a bright yellow roadster. About as subtle a tail as a dozen black-and-whites with their sirens blasting.” He tried to recall what he’d seen of the man, to bring back the hastily glimpsed details of that dark-clad figure standing in the bushes halfway down the hill. He’d seen him for only an instant before the guy turned suddenly and moved away, to vanish like a shadow among the lower houses. A thin man in a dark green windbreaker and dark jeans. And a hat? Yes, a brown slouch hat pulled low over his face, hiding it from Joe’s high vantage point among the branches.

He’d appeared again for an instant, just above the lower street, slipping fast through a side yard. He hadn’t seen the man’s face, and from that height, he’d caught no scent of him. If that guy was the killer, he wouldn’t know him from Adam, he’d recognize only the clothes. So what kind of undercover cat was he?

He thought the car was a four-door. It was fairly new, he had the impression of smooth, expensive curves. He’d gotten only a glimpse before the trees hid it. A few flashes of white and an occasional flash of red taillights as it braked at the curves and then as it turned, and it was gone.

Could the guy have followed Clyde ’s roadster up the hill from the Parker house? But why? Unless he was the killer and had been down there spying on the two detectives? Who but the killer of the vanished body would have reason to be watching Dallas and Juana?

And how had he been clever enough to spy on a pair of cops and not be seen? If those two had seen him down there, they’d have collared him, questioned him, gotten his name, run his driver’s license if he had one. And why would he follow Clyde and Ryan after they’d stopped to talk with the detectives?

Joe recast the conversation at the Parker house, as he’d crouched in the backseat of the roadster trying to look sleepy and clueless. Davis had mentioned the samples she’d sent to the lab to see if they were human blood. The two detectives and Ryan and Clyde had talked about the neighborhood, about who lived on that street. Dallas said there was only one guy he knew of with an arrest sheet, and that was for a white-collar crime, a sleazy embezzlement.

Any of that might be of interest to the killer. But what, exactly, had made him slip up the hill to stand among the bushes where, in the silent neighborhood, he must have heard every word they said. Joe tried to remember if, at the Parker house before Dallas and Juana came over to the car, he had spoken. Could the guy have heard him talking? The thought made the skin along his back twitch and his fur bristle.

He couldn’t remember saying a word. And later, up the hill, when Charlie, Clyde, and Ryan had talked about house hunting, about looking at an empty ranch and about checking Ryan’s current remodel to see if the drain had been dug, Joe was sure he hadn’t spoken.

Except… Clyde had said, You haven’t been by the Parker house? And he had turned to stare at Joe. This time, we have a disappearing body. We have a supposed murder. But there’s no corpse. And his look at Joe had been so pointed and angry that Charlie had looked into the backseat, too, fixing an intent gaze on one gray tomcat.

Well, hell, Joe thought. To the eavesdropper that would be no more than idle conversation. What could possibly lead him to imagine that they were talking to a cat, or that the cat understood them?

Still, the incident made him nervous, made him wish his human friends would be more careful. His paws on the dashboard, he looked ahead as Charlie caught up with the roadster at the intersection of Ocean where Clyde had stopped for a tangle of slow-moving pedestrians.

As Charlie pulled over behind him, Ryan caught up with the Blazer, and stood talking through the passenger window. “I lost him, way back. I think it was a Lexus. There was mud smeared on the plate.” She glanced up toward the highway. “He turned left into half a dozen cars, four of them white, all heading up the hill. A UPS truck pulled in behind them, blocking my view, but three white cars turned left onto the freeway.”

“You want to try to follow him?” Charlie asked. “With no more of a description than-”

“Green windbreaker,” Joe interrupted. “Dark jeans. Brown slouch hat. I couldn’t see his face.”

“We’ll take the north route,” Ryan said and headed for the roadster.

Charlie followed them uphill toward the freeway, armed with enough information that, with luck and a prayer, they might be able to spot the guy. They turned left and she turned right, heading south.

MOVING SLOWLY IN the heavy noon traffic, Charlie and Joe couldn’t pass on the two-lane highway, the lane in the other direction being wall-to-wall cars. Couldn’t catch up with the three white cars they could glimpse far ahead of them down the steep hill. At the turnoff to the little shopping plaza, two of the cars made the left and one kept moving south. Charlie glanced at Joe.

“Go for the plaza,” Joe said, watching both cars turn into the shopping area. He lifted a paw nervously, willing the truck ahead of the Blazer to turn before the light changed to red again.

They didn’t make it, the truck turned as the signal went red. By the time Charlie pulled into the parking lot, both white cars had vanished. She paused, scanning the rows of vehicles.

“Put your windows down,” Joe said as he slipped up onto the dash.

She hit the buttons to lower the windows, and began to drive slowly up and down the rows. Crouched on the dash, Joe examined each white car they passed, sniffing the air for fresh exhaust. There were white cars in every row. He sniffed each and peered inside, studying the few drivers who were getting in or out, or who sat listening to music or talk radio, waiting for some more energetic partner to return loaded with parcels and grocery bags. A white-haired woman dozed in a white Buick. A long-haired blonde in a Ford coupe glanced around at them, and turned out to be a man. Watching for a guy in a green windbreaker, Joe thought about Ryan and Clyde heading north on the four-lane, wondering if they’d have better luck.

They covered the parking lot at a tedious crawl, then Charlie pulled into an empty slot in front of the drugstore. Cuddling Joe under her arm like a little lapdog, she headed inside to walk the aisles.

They saw no man even close to Joe’s description, and their search didn’t last long once people noticed him. “Oh, look at the kitty!” “Mama, that woman has a cat!” “You take your cat shopping with you? How cute.” Soon Joe’s claws were out, ready to bloody the next reaching hand that tried to stroke him. He could feel Charlie shaking with laughter as they returned to the parking lot.

“Let’s walk it once,” Joe said. “Behind the cars.” She did that, and Joe sniffed at each trunk seeking the scent of swimming-pool mud or the stink of a dead body. He smelled dust; dirty clothes, as from someone’s laundry on the way to the Laundromat; and bananas and various other food items from recently stashed grocery bags. But no residue of a ripening body.

“Wild-goose chase,” Charlie said as she stepped back into the Blazer and dropped Joe on the seat. As she started the engine, a stout woman in the next car looked in and smiled, as if pleased to see someone talking to her cat. She pulled away, still smiling.

Joe said, “Why would he follow Clyde and Ryan from the Parker house? What was so interesting?”

“Maybe he drove up there to watch me while I checked the empty houses.”

Joe raised his ears. “You think that was your prowler? The guy who let Mango out? Then he had nothing to do with the murder at the Parker house.”

“The cleaning crew found a few little things missing in the vacationers’ houses. Or maybe they were only out of place. Not enough to be a burglary, but enough to make me wonder.”

“Dulcie and Kit and I could have a look. There was a strange smell around the Parker house-besides the body. Almost like catnip, or catmint. If he’s been in those houses…”

“Did you smell that in the Chapman house?”

He frowned. “No. But the smell of kittens and cat box, and cat food, can cover a lot of smells. That, and Theresa Chapman’s lemon room freshener. Who knows what we’d find in the other houses.”

She glanced over at him, wishing she hadn’t brought it up, hadn’t put the idea in his head. She wanted to tell him to be careful, but he hated that, hated to be coddled. “You want to call Ryan and Clyde, see if they had any luck on the freeway?”

Joe punched in Clyde ’s number. The phone rang once, then went directly to voice mail.

“Doesn’t have it on,” he growled. Clyde made him crazy when he did that. He tried Ryan’s cell.

“Flannery,” she said on the first ring.

“We’re headed back,” Joe said. “Nothing.”

“Ditto,” Ryan said. “I called Dallas, gave him a description, told him the guy was watching us and maybe watching him and Juana. Anything else you remember, anything you want to add?”

“Nothing,” Joe said, wishing he’d seen the guy’s face.

“We’re going on up to look at that vacant ranch,” Ryan said, “then check the remodel, then meet Helen Thurwell to look at the other houses. She wasn’t happy that we had to reschedule. You want to join us?” she said brightly. He could just see her smart-assed grin, knowing how he hated looking at houses.

“I’ll pass on this one,” he said. All those smells of strange humans and strange animals, of sour clothes and toxic cleaning solutions. Someone else’s empty house wasn’t his territory. If it had no connection to a crime scene, he wasn’t interested in exploring.

“See you at home,” she said, laughing at him. “Lupe’s Playa for dinner, if we get back early?”

Joe licked his whiskers at the thought of a Mexican supper. As she rang off, he imagined the yellow roadster turning off the freeway, going through an underpass or over a bridge and taking an on-ramp south again, heading up in the hills above the village to resume their maniacal new obsession of house hunting.

What good was it, he thought, if Clyde stopped collecting old cars and grew equally involved with old decrepit houses? Both pursuits were, in Joe’s opinion, the human’s mindless and futile attempt to revive and save the known world.

As Charlie turned down Ocean toward the village, he started thinking again about Juana and Dallas, wondering why they hadn’t made that guy when he’d been spying on them.

“What?” Charlie said, looking over at him as she slowed at a stop sign.

“How could they miss him? Down at the Parker place? And if they did see him, why didn’t they arrest him or at least question him?” The more he thought about that, the more irritated he became. It was the first time he’d ever felt anger at a cop, certainly at either of those two.

“You don’t have much faith in our detectives,” she said, pulling away from the stop sign. “Maybe they didn’t see him, with all the overgrown bushes and tall fences. Even the best officer might miss someone completely hidden, Joe. Maybe he slipped inside a house. Maybe…” She was silent a moment, turning onto her aunt Wilma’s street, then she reached to stroke his back. “Don’t be cranky. That guy might have been just some nosy neighbor, we might have gotten all excited for nothing.” She pulled to the curb in front of Wilma’s cottage. “If that guy was the housebreaker-or was your killer-dispatch has his description. Maybe one of the units will pick him up.”

Wilma Getz’s stone cottage stood beneath spreading oaks, with not a bit of lawn in front. A deep, richly flowered garden spread away to the house. The roof was dark slate, slippery to the paws when wet with rain, warm as a stovetop beneath the summer sun. In the window of Wilma’s living room, they could see Dulcie looking out, lashing her striped tail, and Joe brightened at the sight of his tabby lady. Her paw was lifted, her green eyes intent on him. Charlie watched them, and smiled. In spite of the human scum one encountered, one could always find honesty and truth among the animals-and find wonder. The world was an exciting place when you knew its secrets, when you could share in a feline miracle as real and amazing as a little speaking cat lifting her paw in greeting.

Stroking Joe and picking him up, Charlie got out of the Blazer and headed inside. In her arms, Joe wriggled with impatience, then leaped down, racing ahead to the cat door.