Cat Telling Tales

19

“They can’t put you in jail,” Billy said indignantly, clinging to Emmylou, watching the officers and their prisoner. “What did you do? You didn’t do anything.”

“They only want my fingerprints,” she said, “they say it’s routine. Didn’t they take yours?” Billy nodded. She said, “Sammie’s house is trashed inside, I don’t know what happened. While I’m at the station I’ll report her missing, maybe they can find out where she’s gone. First the fire, and Hesmerra, and now . . . seems like everything’s gone wrong.” She saw the hurt in his eyes at mention of his gran, and hugged him hard. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to upset you. I’m just a foolish old woman.”

“Have you been staying at Sammie’s?” he said so softly the cats could barely hear.

Emmylou shook her head. “She didn’t leave the key, I can’t find the key. But I did break in, just now, to look inside for the cats. She always comes to tell me if she’s going away, she always leaves the key.” She looked at Billy, frowning. “She said more than once that someone was watching her, maybe following her. She’s been gone since before the fire, and not a word. She could have found me, found my car. And now, where are the poor cats? Muddy raccoon prints all over the back porch, too, and in the house, so maybe it wasn’t a person at all, but those beasts . . . Oh, the poor cats.”

The raccoons of Molena Point seemed singularly wicked, they killed unwary cats, attacked small dogs in their own fenced yards, attacked the owners when they intervened. Several villagers had been so badly bitten they were taken to emergency for shots and stitches. Twice an angry mother raccoon, apparently rearing her kittens in the bushes of a downtown cottage, attacked small dogs as their owners took them for an evening stroll. It did no good to trap and move the beasts, they either came back or, wherever they were released, became someone else’s problem. And the village’s no-kill policy regarding predatory wild animals meant the raccoons increased in numbers at their own pleasure. One’s only choice was to stay out of their way.

As Emmylou headed away for her car, on the roof above, Dulcie said, “Didn’t Chichi Barbi trap a black-and-white cat last week? Was that one of Sammie’s cats?”

“Don’t know,” Joe said, distracted. Below them, the prisoner either couldn’t speak English, or pretended he couldn’t. Juana had joined them and was having a go in Spanish. When the guy wouldn’t talk to her, either, pretending not to understand her, Crowley helped him into the backseat of the squad car, holding the guy’s head down so he wouldn’t crack his skull, and took him away. McFarland followed in the SUV, hauling the meth supplies from Hanni’s garage, and the cats headed for the Damen cottage, where they could hear Debbie inside, complaining.

“That old linoleum’s filthy, I can’t live in this mess.” Ignoring the cleaning rags and scrub brushes, she said, “I’d better get down to the police, for fingerprints, Captain Harper did seem in a hurry,” and she fled the house, calling the kids, moving away toward her car. The cats, with both Debbie and Emmylou headed for MPPD, raced away across the roofs, eager to see how this came down, amused that Debbie hated scrubbing the floor even more than facing Harper again.

Running through the cold rain across the wet shingles and the slippery limbs of oak and cypress, Joe and Dulcie hit the courthouse roof soaked nearly to the skin, galloped its length, and dropped down through the branches to MPPD’s glass door. Any sensible cat would be curled up on a deep couch before a warming fire. But what the hell, Joe thought, pawing at the door.

Mabel Farthy, behind the counter, rose at once to let them in. There was nothing quite as satisfying to a persistent cat as an obedient human, as to see his training pay off. “Oh, you poor things, you’re soaking.” The grandmotherly woman fit snugly in her uniform, its dark color setting off her creamy complexion and blond-dyed white hair. She, and the office, smelled of cinnamon buns, testimony to the competence with which Mabel mothered the officers. From beneath the counter she produced a baker’s box, which she set beside the in-box. Enticing Joe and Dulcie up, she broke a bun into small pieces, laid them out on a clean paper plate. By the time their rough tongues had snatched up the last sticky crumb, she’d dried them both off with paper towels, all the while scolding them for getting wet. They were washing the damp places she’d missed when they heard Vinnie Kraft’s whining from beyond the glass door, looked up to see Debbie hurrying across the parking lot dragging Vinnie and Tessa.

Shoving in through the glass door, Debbie sailed past the bars of the holding cell, past the folding chairs that stood against the wall, bearing down on Mabel. “I’m here to see Captain Harper. At his request, so I don’t expect to be kept waiting.” The eyes of both children were fixed on the cats, particularly on Joe, who sat center stage on Mabel’s counter.

“That’s Ryan and Clyde’s cat,” Vinnie said sharply.

“Don’t be silly.” Debbie stared at the cats as if something disgusting had been left in a public place. “What would their cat be doing in a police station? Sit down, Vinnie.” Moving away from the cats to the other end of the counter, she returned her scowl to Mabel. “Is Captain Harper here? He as much as demanded that I come in. I don’t have time to wait.”

Mabel looked her over, her round face expressionless. “Captain Harper is busy. Would you like to take a seat?” Deftly she moved the tray of outgoing mail back from the edge as Vinnie reached a hand up. Dulcie and Joe backed away, too, watching the kid warily.

Debbie huffed and took a seat, pulling the children away with her. Mabel resumed sorting the mail, looking up only when the glass door opened again and two women and a thin little man stepped in. The women were dumpy and soft, faintly unkempt, their hair marceled into rigid waves, their dresses reminiscent of the flowered rayon frocks one saw in old ’40s movies. The man was a precise little fellow decked out in a dark three-piece suit, his thin face clean shaven except for a carefully trimmed beard of the same salt-and-pepper gray as his neatly styled, short hair; the trio might have just stepped out of the photo the cats had found in Alain Bent’s file cabinet. Their expressions were every bit as sour, though they approached Mabel’s counter uncertainly. Behind them Debbie had turned away, leaning down over Tessa to adjust the little girl’s hair bow.

Both women were squarely built, as sturdy as pit bulls, they had to be mother and daughter. The older woman’s face was pale as milk, her skin thick with small scars as if she’d suffered endless little surgeries. “I’m not sure we’ve come to the right place,” she said, “to report a missing person? Or someone we think is missing? My cousin . . . I’m Norine Sutherland. This is my daughter, Betty, my husband, Delbert,” she said abruptly. “My cousin is Alain Bent. The Realtor?” She launched into a long and complicated explanation of why they thought Alain was missing—but the cats’ attention was on Debbie. She watched the three warily, and when the older woman glanced idly at her, she leaned down again as if dusting lint from her shoe. She knew these people—but perhaps they didn’t know her? Could she know them only from the same picture, which was tucked into Alain’s file cabinet?

Yet if they didn’t know her, why was she so wary? One more glance from the older woman and Debbie rose and left, hurrying the kids out, her expression hard to read. Behind her on Mabel’s counter Joe and Dulcie sat washing their paws, highly entertained by the little drama. But across the village, another, subtler drama was unfolding.

On the cliff above the sea where the rainy wind swept cold, the big red tom stood still, looking. Something watched him, something hidden among the blowing grass; while beyond him, at the street, the lone woman still rummaged in her car, the rain blowing in on her backside as she looked for something or maybe tended to her vagabond housekeeping. Then suddenly among the shifting grasses the darker shadow moved again, staying downwind so he could get no scent at all.

He’d come a good way along the cliff, looking down at the shore below, searching for the little fishing dock. Maybe it had been torn down or perhaps swept away by a high sea, was no longer there, where Misto had remembered it from his youth? But now again Pan searched the grass, and again his skin rippled from the shadowy presence. Who would follow him, and why? No cat knew him here. This wasn’t a dangerous predator, he didn’t sense that at all, but still he crouched, ready to fight or run, whichever was expedient. Above him the dark clouds heaved lower, heralding an early dusk, and the drenched grass forest began to fill up with shadows—but there, where a tangle of blackberries wove dense and dark, something solid crouched, poised. A darkly mottled shadow, a pair of eyes bright as marigolds, holding steady on him. He eased forward, and caught the scent of her, mixed with the smell of sea and rain. He could see the tip of her fluffy tail twitching, her only movement as she watched him.

Slowly she emerged from among a tangle of blackberry vines into the grass, and shyly she slipped closer. Her long, wind-rumpled fur was a mix of black and brown, her face mottled black and brown, her yellow eyes keen with curiosity. Very close to him she stopped. She looked deep into his eyes, studied his face, and then again she moved closer. She looked him all over. She tasted his scent on the wind. She looked closely at the circular mark on his shoulder.

“Pan?” she said, startling him. “You can’t be Pan?”

“I’m Pan,” he said warily. “How could you know me?”

“Where did you come from? How did you come here?”

“How do you know my name?”

“Who is your father?”

“My father is Misto,” he said. “Do you know him?”

“He’s here,” she said, twitching her wind-tangled tail. “Misto’s here, he talks about you. How did you know to come here, how did you know where to find him?” Beyond them at the street the old woman had backed out of the car with a paper bag in her hand. Closing the door, she turned and headed straight toward them, wading through the blowing grass soaking her jeans, carrying a bundled-up brown blanket. Immediately the two cats hunkered down, made themselves small, peered up side by side through the blowing stalks. Both felt a rippling urge to run, an inborn alarm that she might throw the blanket over them—yet they remained still. Had she even seen them?

Unaware, she moved past them to the cliff’s edge. At the very brink, she began to trample the grass, pressing it down in a circle. Spreading out the old blanket, she sat down in the center, ignoring the fitful rain.

The tortoiseshell relaxed, laughing softly as the old woman took a strip of paper towel from the bag, smoothed it down on the blanket, and laid out her thermos, an apple, and a cellophane-wrapped sandwich.

“Suppertime,” she whispered. She looked Pan over again, her yellow eyes so clear and bold they quite unsettled him. “My name is Kit. You’ve come to find Misto. But how . . . ?”

“Is he here?” he said with excitement, lashing his red-striped tail.

“Yes, but how did you find him? Oh,” she said, “from his tales? You found this place from his stories?”

“Yes, but how do you know that? Then I saw pictures of the village, exactly the way he described. There are lots of villages all along the coast, but none quite like this one, not the same cluster of cottages so cozy beneath the spreading trees.” He looked at her intently. “Is there a fishing dock farther along the shore? Do ferals live there?”

“They live there. And Misto comes every morning and evening, he’ll be there soon, now,” she said, laughing at the light that blazed in his russet eyes. “You came all this way, because of a picture?”

“Lots of pictures, color pictures in magazines in the house where I lived, and then photographs, and I knew this was the right village.” Pan wiped at his ear with a front paw, where the grass seeds tickled. “I saw this place and thought about Pa, I knew he was growing old and would miss his kittenhood home, and I guessed he might come here.

“Once I lived in a nursing home,” he said. “I listened to those old folks, how they longed for the places of their childhood, and I thought Pa would be longing, too, wanting to return to where he was a kitten. After the nursing home burned down I set out to follow him. Do you know what it’s like not to have any notion where your pa is, or even if he’s still alive?”

“I never knew who my father was,” Kit said. “I never knew him at all. My mother . . .” She went silent as a police car came up the narrow street cruising slowly, nosing to the curb in front of Emmylou’s car as if to block its departure. Officer Brennan sat a moment talking on the radio, glancing at the empty car and then scanning the cliff. His bulk completely filled the driver’s seat; and the cats could hear the faint, tinny reply of the dispatcher—but so could Emmylou. She ducked down below the tall grass, cowed there as still as a cat, herself.

But not still enough. Brennan, seeing movement, stepped out of the black-and-white, moving lightly considering his weight, and approached through the rustling grass asking her to come out. The weight of his equipment belt made him look all the heftier, his holstered gun, the radio and phone and nightstick, the holstered pepper spray and Taser. The third time he spoke, Emmylou rose up out of the grass like a windblown scarecrow, scowling at him, clutching her thermos and lunch bag to her as if for protection.

Brennan said, “The chief’s looking for you to come in, Emmylou, for fingerprinting, right?”

Emmylou said nothing, she just looked at him, clutching her lunch bag closer.

“Why don’t you come on in with me? It won’t take long, and I’ll bring you back.” He nodded toward her old Chevy. “You can leave your car, I’ll see it isn’t ticketed.”

Emmylou’s expression was such a comical mix of defiance and helpless resignation that both cats, peering up through the tangle of green blades, had to stifle a laugh—but Kit watched Pan shyly, too. He was the handsomest tomcat she’d ever seen, he was big, well muscled, his rust-red coat beautifully striped, wide dark tiger stripes, and as sleek as silk. And he was Misto’s son, she could see Misto’s own kindness and honesty in his face, in his copper-colored eyes. She daren’t look at him too long, his returning gaze left her as giddy as a kitten on its first tumble of catnip.

As Officer Brennan helped Emmylou into his squad car, Kit led Pan along the edge of the cliff above the pale sand and dark and rolling sea, led him toward the dock and the feral band where John Firetti would be setting out the evening meal, led Pan to where he’d find his pa again after so long a searching, and she could hardly wait.