Cat Telling Tales

16

In the dumpy little kitchen, Debbie had torn open the wrapper of a loaf of bread and was hastily putting together sandwiches for the children, maybe hoping to keep Vinnie from whining any more about the white brick house. The kitchen counter was crowded with grocery bags that were still not unpacked except for the bread and peanut butter. Joe watched from Ryan’s shoulder as Vinnie grabbed the open jar, stuck her fingers in, retrieving a big glob, and licked them clean, her small face pinched with anger.

Though Joe had come up looking for Dulcie, hoping she’d escaped whatever tight squeak she’d gotten herself into with that aborted phone call, he’d found no sign of her. No scent of her, nothing. Coming up the hill, he’d passed two cops he knew, dressed in blue coveralls with the water department insignia on the pockets and sleeves. They were kneeling together at the curb beneath a spreading cypress tree, pretending to examine a water meter, their position giving them a straightaway view beneath the branches to the meth house. Did Harper expect other members of that ragtag gang to return to their little home business? He had passed Ryan’s sister Hanni, too, pulling her blue Chrysler van up to the one-car garage of her own remodel. Ryan was nearly finished with the exterior, had covered the gray board siding with white stucco and added a new tile roof as deep blue as an autumn sky.

Now as Ryan headed outdoors from her own cottage, away from the crowded kitchen and away from Debbie, Joe looked from her shoulder up the hill, scanning the rooftops for Dulcie. He looked past the rambling white house, but then quickly back as two dark streaks flashed across the roof into the shadow of the pines that sheltered the double garage; the sight of Dulcie, safe, made him inadvertently dig his claws into Ryan’s shoulder.

“Hey!” she said, pulling his claws free.

“Sorry.” He patted her cheek with a soft paw. “Gotta go, explain later,” and with a leap into the overhanging cypress tree, he left her, heading up the hill from roof to rising roof, looking for his lady.

There, they appeared again, two dark shapes barely visible atop the garage, two pairs of sharp ears silhouetted against the low clouds. Racing to join them, he greeted Dulcie with nose pushes and purrs. “What happened to you? You were caught with someone’s phone? I was in Harper’s office when you clicked off.”

“Emmylou saw me.”

“Oh my God. She heard you using the phone? She—”

“She didn’t hear me,” Dulcie interrupted, “she saw me through the glass. When I saw her looking in, I pretended to be batting at a moth. She was outside, and I was talking softly, she couldn’t have heard me.”

“I hope to hell not,” he said crossly.

“We saw her on the street, going door to door asking about two lost cats. She came up into the patio, sat down on that low wall beside the camellias. Took a sandwich out of her pocket, unwrapped it, one of those dry-looking sandwiches in yellow paper. I was inside the house, it was a perfect time to phone, without losing her.”

“How did you get in?”

Dulcie smiled. “A basement window, all locked but the last one.” She lashed her tail smugly. “Broken, rusty lock, and when we pushed the window it swung right in. Come on, I’ll show you.”

But Joe paused, watching Kit. All this time, she hadn’t said a word, she sat apart from them, staring off into space. Watching her, Joe twitched an ear at Dulcie. “What?” he said softly.

“We were with Misto,” Dulcie said. “Her head’s full of stories, that’s all. He talked about Pan, too. He misses Pan, and he’s worried because of the nursing home fire. Kit’s worried for them both.”

Joe shifted uneasily, wishing Kit had never told Misto about Pan, that she had never upset the old cat. The tortoiseshell was so damned impulsive, as unpredictable as the leaps of a grasshopper. Well, what was done, was done. He said, “What about Emmylou? What did she do when she saw you?”

“She looked puzzled to see a cat in there, and when she finished her lunch she walked all around the house, looking to see how I got in. I watched from above, from the windows.” Dulcie smiled. “I’d kicked the window closed when I jumped, she didn’t have a clue, she went right on by. The next thing I know she’s at the front door and it sounded like she had a key, trying to get inside.”

“But she—” Kit began, suddenly paying attention.

“That’s when Kit appeared,” Dulcie said.

“I watched her from the roof and the key wouldn’t turn,” she said. “She tried and tried and seemed really sure it was the right key, so maybe Alain Bent changed the locks when she moved and Emmylou didn’t know and—”

“Where did she get a key?” Joe said. “From Hesmerra? Did Hesmerra have it copied when she was with the cleaning crew? Maybe on her lunch hour, then turned the keys in as usual at the end of the day?”

“Why not?” Dulcie said. “Maybe Emmylou found the key in the burn, maybe knew where she kept it?”

“So, why did she?” Joe wondered. “What did she do when she couldn’t get in?”

“She sat down on the patio wall,” Dulcie said, “sat there looking at the house as if deciding what to do next.”

“But then Ryan’s pickup came up the hill,” Kit said, “and Debbie’s car behind it, and when Emmylou saw them she slipped away through the backyard and that’s the last we saw of her, she vanished like when a rabbit smells a coyote, and there’s something else, too. Debbie’s been inside, you can smell her and the little kids all around the door on the threshold and then inside the house.”

Joe said, “I’m guessing they stayed there, maybe one night, maybe more, before they ever showed up at our place.” He told them about Vinnie saying there were beds to sleep in, up there in that house, and then racing away up the hill.

“What’s Debbie up to?” Dulcie said, looking down the hill to where Debbie was hauling in a last load from her car. “What would she want in Alain Bent’s house? How did . . . ?” She looked at Joe. “It has to do with Erik. He and Alain were partners—or were they more than partners?”

Joe smiled. “If they were, maybe Erik had a key. Say Debbie found out they were lovers,” he said, “found a key she suspected was Alain’s . . . How tempting to copy it and then do a bit of snooping, get the goods on him.”

“But why?” Dulcie said. “She wouldn’t need to know he was sleeping around, to get a divorce in California.”

“Maybe for child custody,” Joe said. “Except,” he said, “who’d fight to keep Vinnie? Maybe some other reason. Looks like Alain was into some real estate scams or maybe, who knows, Erik and Alain together. Debbie wants to know more, to make some mischief for them. She decides to get into Alain’s desk, into her personal papers. Who knows what she’d find, what trouble she could make? She could have come down here from Eugene any time she chose. Catch a commuter flight, round trip just for a day while the kids were in school and nursery school? But as it worked out, she drove down, left Eugene for good.”

“With Alain’s key in her pocket,” Dulcie said. “Alain is beautiful, so slim, and her dark sleek hair done up in that fancy chignon, and her elegant suits. You’ve seen her pictures, of course Debbie would be jealous.”

“Beautiful,” Joe said, “and as cold as a mannequin in Saks’s window.” He looked down into the wide front patio with its angles and nooks and lush plantings, its different level walls and neatly tended flower beds. “Alain might have been fired and moved away, Perry Fowler might not be in touch with her any longer, but she isn’t neglecting her property. Maybe she does have it listed, with another firm, and they’re seeing that someone’s watering.”

“And pruning,” Dulcie said. There wasn’t a dead bloom or fallen leaf anywhere, and they could see fresh cuts where the red geraniums had been clipped back. “Or could Emmylou be taking care of the yard? When Alain moved away, could she have hired her? Was that why she was here? Maybe . . . maybe when she was pruning she found a key hidden under a flowerpot, the way people do? Found it just today, and thought she had a way in? She is homeless, she does need a place to stay. She finds the key and thinks she’s found a place to crash. Only, Alain has changed the locks.”

“Maybe,” Joe said. But something about the scenario was off. As little as he’d observed of Emmylou, he wasn’t sure she’d be bold enough to move into someone’s house, when workmen might be scheduled to come in, or maybe other Realtors, to have a look, if the house was going on the market. The garage roof was in shadow now, around them, the clouds low and heavy above them. Moving closer together with their backs to the chill wind, the three cats tried to sort out what they knew about Alain Bent: She was Erik Kraft’s sales partner, and maybe his lover. She’d not only been fired, but moved away, maybe before her other scams caught up with her. How much did Debbie know about Alain? What had she been after, when she broke in?

“And what’s Emmylou Warren’s connection?” Dulcie said. “Will that lead back to Hesmerra and maybe to Hesmerra’s murder?”

Joe looked down into the patio of the silent, locked house. He rose, nudged Dulcie, and the three cats skinned down a bougainvillea trellis to the warm paving and headed for the basement window.

Pushing the little window open, they peered down into the dark cellar. Its cold breath chilled their noses; it smelled of damp cement, sour earth, and mouse droppings. “How deep?” Joe said, frowning down into the blackness. “Looks like about seven feet. How did you get out? The boxes?”

“Yes,” Dulcie said. “I pushed that stack of boxes over,” she said, glancing down at the dark cartons piled against the wall directly beneath them. “I could just see them there in the corner where more daylight comes in; my shoulder’s still sore from shoving them. The labels say ‘dishes’ but who knows what’s packed in them. They smell sour, like old clothes.” Slipping in through the window, she dropped down onto the stack, and to the floor. Kit followed, and then Joe, each one careful not to tip over their means of escape.

The cellar was L-shaped, following the lines of the house above. The dark corners and the spaces behind the furnace and water heater were thick with cobwebs, and garlands of cobwebs hung down from the floor joists. Three folded aluminum chairs leaned against one wall, their plastic seats frayed, and gray with mildew. There was no scent of Debbie or the little girls down here, and they padded up the dusty wooden stairs. Leaping at the knob, Dulcie curved her paws around it, swinging and kicking until the door flew open.

The house was dim, the rooms lit coldly as the coming storm gathered. They had come up into the front entry, the basement door at right angles to the more impressive front door with its deep carvings, and that did indeed smell of Debbie and the children. A smear of chocolate candy had been smashed into the grout between the floor tiles.

Across the tile entry, six steps led down to a sunken living room, which was only half furnished. The clay tile floor was bare, but Dulcie could imagine richly colored throw rugs. There was a creamy leather couch but no end tables or coffee table or lamps. White walls, vast windows looking out on the lowering gray sky and the trees and roofs below, white ceiling crossed by burnished oak rafters. The house was silent, no hush of footsteps, no thump or rustle of someone hurrying their way, summoned by the sound of the cellar door. Already, Kit had left them, racing down into the sunken room to look at the fireplace wall.

The entire wall was painted in an intricate mural, a floor-to-ceiling scene in rich colors, though Joe and Dulcie couldn’t see the subject clearly from the angle where they stood, up on the dining balcony. Moving out from beneath the carved table and chairs, Dulcie leaned out through the rail, to look.

“Medieval,” she said softly. “Oh, my. It’s beautiful.” Below her, Kit sat in the center of the room looking up at the mural, her fluffy tail wrapped around her, twitching with excitement, her front paws kneading at the tiles in nervous concentration as she absorbed each detail of the ancient scene. From the look on her face, Dulcie knew the tortoiseshell was already transported back into time, how many centuries ago?

“It’s a beautiful home,” Dulcie said. “Even if Alain was fired, it’s strange she’d leave this, and leave the village, when Molena Point’s doing better than much of the country. Couldn’t she get a job somewhere else, another real estate firm? You’ve seen the ads. The high-end houses are still selling, some of the really wealthy people are doing just fine. Where else could a Realtor make better money?”

Joe said, “Word gets around. If she was pulling scams on her buyers, who else would hire her?” Out through the wide living room windows, they could see down the hill to the roof of Ryan and Clyde’s cottage, Ryan’s truck still parked at the curb. Two blocks over was Hanni’s deep blue roof, her own van parked halfway into the garage, and two blocks to the right of Hanni’s, forming a rough triangle, the meth house stood forlorn with its curled shingles and overgrown yard. A neighborhood in transition, people forced to move away, uneasy events among the homes they left behind, dramas that could well fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw. Was a pattern taking shape here that would lead directly back to Hesmerra and to the fire, and to the poison that killed her?

Below them, Kit sat with her back to the view, her attention centuries away on a narrow, cobbled street between houses built of wattle and thatched roofs, a medieval street that must speak deeply to the tortoiseshell’s romantic dreams. To Joe, dreams of the past were pointless, ancient history was, after all, forever gone and useless, and uncomfortably he turned away. Silently Dulcie followed him, amused and annoyed by her practical and hardheaded tomcat.

The house wasn’t large. A hall led back to a bedroom and bath on the right, and to a master bedroom straight ahead that took up the whole back of the house. The bed in the smaller room smelled of the two little girls and of chocolate candy, but it was neatly made. Padding into the master suite, they looked out through the glass doors to a back patio, its tile paving matching the interior floors. An empty swimming pool just outside the glass was covered with heavy, transparent plastic that sagged beneath a pile of pine needles and oak leaves from the woods beyond the white brick wall. Against the wall itself stood oversized pots of tall, drought-resistant grasses in shades of bronze and gold.

In the bedroom, the only furniture remaining was a king-sized bed that smelled of Debbie, and a large office desk along one wall, with a swivel typing chair. The closet was all but empty, a few limp jackets hanging at one end, a lone hanger fallen to the floor. A large suitcase lay on the floor, too, and was heavy when they pushed at it; and when Dulcie leaped up to the closet shelf, its dusty surface showed the marks where two smaller bags had been removed. She glanced down at Alain’s expensive leather suitcase. “Why did she leave that?” The shelf smelled of Debbie, too, and she could see where Debbie had smeared the dust, probably reaching above her head, searching, for what? She dropped down again to sniff at the leather bag. It was secured with a little padlock; maybe they’d find the key, maybe not. The whole room smelled of Debbie, as did every drawer in the master bath, as if she’d gone through the entire house.

While Dulcie went to inspect the kitchen, Joe had a go at the desk. This was not a desk someone would pay to have moved, just an ordinary office-supply model made of fake oak laminate. The dusty cubbyhole that yawned in the left-hand pedestal was pocked with small black marks where a computer had stood. A thick, old-style monitor had been left behind. The blotter was still in place, dog-eared and incised with various notations, phone numbers, little floor plan sketches, used perhaps to clarify Alain’s memory of some particular house as she talked with a client. Beside it, a rectangle with less dust showed where something the size of a briefcase, or laptop, had lain. There was no dust on the drawer handles, and Debbie’s scent was strong. The desk’s file drawer was marred and dented with fresh scratches, as if someone had jimmied the lock. When Joe fought the drawer out, pulling with stubborn claws, he could see that the lock’s little metal arm was broken off.

Rearing up, he pawed through the hanging folders. Most were empty, folders labeled for house insurance, car insurance, medical records. Alain had left behind files of notes about old sales, but nothing more recent than four years. If there’d been anything of interest to others, had Debbie made off with it? Climbing into the dark drawer, he pawed under the files. He felt the broken metal bar, cold against his paw. Lying beside it was a small cardboard folder. He clawed it out, was backing out with it in his teeth when Dulcie returned from prowling the kitchen and leaped up beside him. Dropping the folder on the desk, he flipped it open.

It was one of those studio photographer’s folders with a picture inserted inside, into the cardboard frame. The photo was of a couple, maybe in their sixties, a small, thin man, and a big square woman, both with sour looks on their faces. A younger version of the hefty woman stood in front of them. A daughter, perhaps? Didn’t any of them know how to smile? Both women were frumpy, looked as if their clothes had come from a markdown rack, perhaps from the middle of the last century. The women had mousy brown hair, square faces, and pasty white skin, and were surely mother and daughter. The man, by contrast, was a neat little fellow dressed in a three-piece suit, white shirt and subdued tie, his thin cheeks clean shaven, narrowing down to a precisely trimmed goatee. There was not any notation to indicate their identity.

“Flip it out of the frame,” Dulcie said. “Maybe there’s something on the back. Here.” Hissing with impatience, she pawed the picture out.

But there was nothing, only Debbie’s smell, though she hadn’t been interested enough to take the picture with her. Dulcie slid it back into the cardboard frame, and pushed that into the drawer. “They stayed here more than one night. Leftover pizza in the refrigerator, half a hamburger, a carton with some vile-looking spaghetti. A little carton of milk that’s just going sour. Wrappers and takeout cartons in the trash, too.” She frowned, her ears at half-mast. “What was Debbie looking for? If this is about custody of the children, about proving Erik’s having an affair, why bother? If he wanted the kids, why would he leave them in the first place, why not take them with him?”

“Why would either of them want Vinnie?”

“Debbie would, they’re exactly alike, Vinnie’s one of her own. Maybe she’s afraid when Erik gets back from his vacation, finds out she’s here in the village, he’ll claim custody, jinx Debbie’s claim for support payments. No kids, no child support. Maybe that’s all this comes down to, Debbie’s grab for support money.”

But Joe didn’t think so. “Say Erik is into some kind of scam, Erik and Alain together. Debbie would look for proof and, who knows, maybe Hesmerra was after the same thing, when she cleaned for Alain.”

Dulcie licked her paw. “If Alain is doing more than trading down, she gets out when that’s discovered, wants to cover her tracks before she’s charged with real estate fraud? She skips, leaves Erik holding the bag?”

“Maybe.” Joe smoothed his whiskers with a quick paw. “Maybe Hesmerra was spying for Debbie, maybe they weren’t as estranged as Debbie let on. That would explain the Kraft business papers in the metal box Emmylou lifted. Erik finds out the old woman is snooping, and he silences her. Say he killed her, looked for whatever papers she’d taken, but didn’t find anything? So he sets the house on fire, to destroy the evidence.”

In the dining loft, when they looked down through the wrought-iron railing, Kit was still engrossed, rearing up on her hind paws before the mural studying every smallest detail, her dark nose twitching as if she could actually smell the cobbled streets, the wandering sheep and chickens, the homely scents of suppers cooking in the stone and wattle cottages; they watched her dreaming away until suddenly she looked up and saw them, looked embarrassed, dropped down and turned her back as if she had no interest at all in that lost world.

They left Alain Bent’s house through the cellar window. Leaping up one at a time from the cardboard cartons to the sill, swinging and kicking, they fled up and over, and down into the garden beneath a holly bush bright with red berries. Crouching beneath their stickery shelter, they looked down at the neighborhood laid out below them. At the Damen cottage, the front door was open and they could see Ryan and Clyde kneeling just inside on the living room floor.

“They’re praying?” Dulcie said, twitching a whisker.

“Praying it’ll hold together,” Joe said, “that it won’t collapse when they drive the first nail.” Rock stood on the little porch outside the open door, his long leash looped around one of the stanchions. He was looking up the hill, his ears erect, watching them or maybe listening, where they hid among the holly shadows. Weimaraners were sight as well as scent hounds, they could spot a bird in the sky when it was less than a speck, when even Joe and Dulcie could see nothing.

Ryan and Clyde seemed to be examining the linoleum, they had one corner up and were peering at the floor beneath. Joe said, “Maybe they plan to rip it out. Who wants linoleum in a living room?” The minute he spoke, as far away as they were, Rock’s tail began to wag madly, he jumped off the porch, tightening his leash and whining. Amused, they went still; they didn’t speak again, they let him settle down so he wouldn’t break his leash and come charging up the hill.

Two blocks over, at Hanni’s remodel, someone was at work clearing out a flower bed, turning the earth as if preparing it for the bright cold weather cyclamens that stood in flats along the drive. “Billy Young,” Joe said. “Maybe Hanni hired him for the day.” They didn’t see his bike, Hanni must have picked him up at the ranch. Billy looked up as Detective Juana Davis’s Toyota came down the street and parked in front of the cottage. A black-and-white was right behind her, and the department’s SUV pulled up behind it. “What’s this?” Joe said softly. “What’s happened?”

Leaving their prickly shelter, they headed down through the tangled yards. Below them, young Officer Jimmie McFarland stepped out of the van, his brown hair falling in a boyish cowlick over his forehead. He and Davis stood talking with Hanni, then moved into the garage. The two officers in the black-and-white stayed where they were. Not until the cats were halfway across the yard could they see inside the garage clear to the back, where Juana Davis had set her black satchel on the workbench and was removing a camera. Slipping closer, they settled down among the yard’s overgrown geraniums to see what they had missed.