Cat Under Fire

14

The cats fled down the black, burned hills, down into the tall green grass careening together, exploding apart, wild with their sudden freedom. Four days hanging around the Blankenships' had left them stir-crazy, dangerously close to the insane release people called a cat fit. Flying down, dropping steeply down, they collapsed at last, rolling and laughing beneath the wide blue sky. Dulcie leaped at a butterfly, at insects that keened and rustled around them in the blowing grass; racing in circles she terrorized a thousand minute little presences singing their tiny songs and munching on their bits of greenery, sent them scurrying or crushed them. "I wonder if Mama gave in-if she let Frances call the police." She grinned. "I wonder if Frances tried again to phone Attorney Joseph Grey."

She stood switching her tail. "If that was Janet's van that Mama saw, the Saturday night before the fire, what was she doing? She drove up to San Francisco that morning. Why would she come home again in the middle of the night, load up her own paintings? Take them where? If there'd been a show, her agent would have said."

She looked at him intently. "Those weren't Janet's paintings burned in the fire, so whose paintings were they?"

"Could Janet have hidden her own paintings, to collect the insurance?"

"Janet wouldn't do that. And there wasn't any insurance." She lay down, thinking.

"Of course there would be insurance," he said. "Those paintings were worth…"

Dulcie twitched her ear. "Janet didn't insure her work."

"That's crazy. Why wouldn't she? How do you know that?"

"Insurance on paintings is horribly expensive. She told Wilma it costs nearly as much as the price of the work. The rates were so high she decided against it, said she tried three insurance agents and they all gave the same high rates. Wilma says a lot of artists don't insure."

"But Wilma…"

"Wilma has that one painting insured, with a rider on her homeowner's. That's a lot different."

She was quiet a moment, then flipped over and sat up, her eyes widening. "Sicily Aronson has a white van. Don't you remember? She parks it behind the gallery beside the loading door."

"So Sicily took the paintings, at two in the morning? Killed Janet and took her paintings, to sell? Come on, Dulcie. Why would she kill Janet? Janet was her best painter, her meal ticket."

"Maybe Janet planned to leave her. Maybe they had a falling-out. If Janet took all her work away…"

"You've been seeing too many TV movies. If Sicily tried to sell those paintings, if they came on the market, Max Harper would have her behind bars in a second.

"And Beverly wouldn't take them, she inherited Janet's paintings." He licked his paw. "And if there wasn't any insurance, Beverly had nothing to gain." He nibbled his shoulder, pursuing a flea. Even with the amazing changes in his life, he still couldn't shake the fleas. And he hated flea spray.

"Maybe," she said, "Sicily could sell them easier than Beverly. If she did, she'd keep all the money, not have to split with Beverly. With Janet dead, and with so many paintings supposedly destroyed, each canvas is worth a bundle."

"Whoever has them could sell them. Beverly. Sicily. Kendrick Mahl."

"But Mahl had witnesses to everything he did in San Francisco."

Mahl had gone out to dinner with friends both Saturday and Sunday nights, leaving his car in the hotel parking garage. Mahl lived in Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge. He had driven into the city Saturday afternoon and checked into the St. Francis; the hotel was full of artists and critics. In the city he had taken cabs or ridden with friends.

Dulcie scowled. "I guess anyone could have rented a van. When we know who was in that van, we'll know who killed her. I'll bet Detective Marritt didn't take one thumbtack, one scrap of the burned paintings as evidence."

"Or maybe Marritt took thumbtacks but didn't bother to find out how Janet stretched her canvases. You'd think someone would have told him. Wouldn't Sicily?"

"Unless she didn't want the police to know." Dulcie examined her claws. "It'll take a lot of phoning, calling all the rental places, to find who rented a white van that night."

"Dulcie, the police will check out the rental places, as soon as they know about the van, and about the missing paintings."

"Where would someone hide that many paintings?" she said speculatively.

He sat up, staring at her. "You think we're going to look for those canvases? You think we're going to find two million dollars' worth of paintings? Those paintings could be anywhere, a private home, an apartment, another gallery… What do you plan to do, go tooling up and down the coast maybe in your BMW, searching through warehouses?"

She smiled sweetly, cutting her eyes at him. "We could try Sicily's gallery."

"Sure, Sicily's going to have those big canvases right there under the cops' noses. And don't you think Captain Harper deserves to know that the paintings are gone, that they weren't burned?"

"It would take only a few minutes, just nip into the gallery and have a look. If we find them, we'll be giving Captain Harper not just a tip, but the whole big, damning story." She grinned. "Not just a sniff of the rabbit but the whole delicious cottontail." Her eyes gleamed green as jewels. "We can slip in through the front door just before Sicily closes, stay out of sight until she locks up."

His eyes gleamed with the challenge. But his better judgment-some latent natural wariness-made his belly twitch. "If we do that and get caught, I hope it's the cops and not Sicily."

"Why ever not? She wouldn't know what we're doing. And Sicily likes cats."

He couldn't, in his wildest imagination, picture Sicily Aronson liking cats. The woman put him off totally. With her dangling bracelets and jiggling earrings and tangles of clanking chains and necklaces and her blowing, layered clothes, she was like a walking boutique. Dulcie practically drooled over the expensive fabrics Sicily wore, the imported hand-dyed prints, the layers of hand-painted cottons drooping over her long, handwoven skirts. Her handmade sandals or tall slim boots smelled of the animals they came from; and her dark hair, bound up in intricate twists secured with strands of silver or jewels, was just too much. She did not look like Molena Point; she looked like San Francisco's bordello district, like some leftover from Sally Stanford days, when that madam was the toast of the city.

And the fact that Sicily could amortize interest in her head, so Clyde had told him, and could accurately compute every possible tax write-off while making light banter or a sales pitch, made her all the more formidable.

"She only dresses like that for PR. It's part of the gallery image." She reached a soft paw to him. "She's really nice. If she catches us in the gallery, she'll probably treat us to a late supper."

"Sure she will. Braised rat poison."

She looked at him, amused. "I've been in the gallery a lot lately, and she's been nice to me." And suddenly she looked stricken. "Oh dear. I guess… I hope we don't find the paintings there, I hope she didn't do it. I was thinking only of proving Rob innocent. But she has been kind to me."

"I didn't know you went in there."

"I've done it for weeks, sometimes at noon when court breaks for lunch, just to listen."

"You suspected her?"

"No, I just wanted to find out what I could. After all, she is Janet's agent."

"So what did you learn?"

"Nothing." She licked her paw. "Except she's a sucker for cats. But I guess most people in the art world like cats. Last week she fed me little sandwiches left over from an opening, and twice she's shared her lunch with me; and she folded a handwoven wool scarf on her desk for me to nap on."

"With that kind of treatment, Wilma may lose her housemate."

Dulcie smiled. "Not a chance. Anyway, if Sicily catches us in the gallery, just roll over, curl your paws sweetly, and smile."

"Sure I will. And nail her with twenty sharp ones when she reaches down to grab me."

She turned away, snorting with disgust.

But in a moment, she said, "I wish we knew what to do about Janet's journal."

"It's evidence, Dulcie. We have to tell the police where to find it. We've been over this."

She sighed.

He moved close against her, licking her ear. "The diary is Captain Harper's business."

"But her diary is so private, it's all that's left to speak for her-except her paintings." She looked at him bleakly. "Why did that terrible thing have to happen? Why did she have to die?"

"At least Janet left her work. That's more than most people leave behind them-something to bring pleasure to others."

"I guess," she said, touching her paw to his, half-amused. Joe did have his tender side, when it suited him. "I guess that's better than poor Mrs. Blankenship. She won't leave the world anything but a house full of china beasties."

Earlier, when she and Joe departed Janet's house, slipping away in the shadows so Mama wouldn't see them, she had looked back across the street and seen Mama sitting at her window eagerly waiting for her.

"It was cruel to make her think I loved her, then to leave. Now she'll be more lonely than ever."

Joe brushed his whiskers against hers. "You could get her a cat. An ordinary little cat who would love her. A kitten maybe."

"Yes," she said, brightening. "A little cat that will stay with her." Her mouth curved with pleasure. "A sweet little cat. Yes, maybe a kitten. Or maybe the white cat. He'll need a home when we find him."

He did not reply. In his opinion, the white cat was long dead-except, if he was dead, then what were these strange dreams? Did the dreams arise, as he hoped, only from Dulcie's active imagination?

They headed down again watching the hills for Stamps's dog. The wild rye and oats on the open slopes was so tall and thick that the animal could easily crouch unseen. They did not see it on the streets below, among the gardens and cottages, did not see it near the gray house, or around the old black pickup. Dulcie studied the ragged house with narrowed eyes, and a little smile curved her pink mouth.

"What?" he said.

"Looks to me like Stamps's window is open."

He said nothing. As they drew near where the pickup was parked, they saw the dog, a shadow among shadows, asleep in the truck bed.

But even as they looked, the beast came awake and sat up and shook himself. Staring up the hill, he either saw them or smelled them, and he suddenly exploded, leaping from the truck straight up the hill…

… and was jerked to a stop by a chain attached to the bumper.

The cats relaxed, their hearts pounding. The dog fought the chain, rattling and jerking the truck, lunging so violently they thought he'd tear off the bumper and come clanging after them.

But the chain held. The bumper didn't give; it seemed to be solidly bolted. "Come on," Dulcie said, "he can't get loose. If we can get in, get the list, we can be out again before the beast stops bellowing."

"What makes you think he isn't home? His truck's there. And why would he leave the list?"

"He left it the other night. And he'll be at work. Charlie told him if he took any more time off, he was through."

"Why would he leave the truck and dog?"

"She told him to lose the dog. She hates that dog. Maybe he had nowhere else to leave it but tied to the truck. He can walk to the job, it's only a few blocks. Look at the window, Joe. It's cracked open. What more do you want? It's a first-class invitation."

Joe grinned. "Sometimes, Dulcie…"

"It won't take a minute. Snatch up the list and out again, home in time for breakfast."

He stood, studying the house, then took off running, a gray streak. They fled past the truck and the dog, straight for Stamps's open window.