Cat Under Fire

19

Spotlights hit the desk, focusing on the open drawer above Joe and Dulcie, and an officer approached. Black trouser legs and black shoes filled their vision. He smelled of shoe polish and gun oil, stood above them as if looking into the drawer and studying its contents. The cats barely breathed. But Dulcie's dark eyes were slitted with amusement. She had that devilish look, as if any second she'd trot out from under the desk and wind around the officer's ankles. Joe glared until she quit grinning and settled back into the blackness of the desk's cubbyhole.

But at last the officer turned away, directing his beam on across the gallery, the officers' two lights washing away each shadow, illuminating each niche. And talk about a small world. Lieutenant Brennan and Officer Wendell had been present up at the car agency when Captain Harper found the counterfeit money. The cats, wandering among the officers' feet, had watched the result of their clandestine efforts with great satisfaction. Brennan was the hefty one. It was hard to tell whether his snug uniform concealed fat or muscle. Wendell was skinny, pale, his narrow face too serious. Joe could not remember ever seeing Wendell smile.

As the officers moved toward the back of the gallery, throwing the desk into darkness, Dulcie shifted her position, easing her tension. At the back, the flashlight beams picked out, one by one, the storeroom door, the three closed doors, the loading door.

But suddenly Brennan's beam swung around, returned to Janet's desk, and dropped beneath it. Hit them square in the face. They were pinned in the glare like moths against a window.

Brennan's gun was drawn. When he saw them he lowered it, laughing. "Cats! Only a couple of cats."

"Cats, for Christ sake," Wendell said. "Could cats trip the alarm?"

"It's at floor level. Anything moving could trip it." Brennan approached the desk, but still scanning the room, keeping his back to the wall. He knelt, reached under. "Come on out, you two. Come on out of there." He reached for Joe, gentle but authoritative.

Joe snarled.

Brennan drew his hand back.

"Okay, don't come out. How did you two get in here-you don't belong here. Sicily doesn't have cats." He rose. "We'll let them be, maybe they'll come out on their own." He started away, then looked back. "You better not have left a mess."

The two officers checked the padlock on the loading door, opened each of the other doors, then moved into the storeroom. Switching on the lights, they covered each other as they searched the three narrow aisles. Only when they had cleared the premises, had found no human intruder and nothing else that seemed disturbed except for the open desk drawer, did they return to rout the cats. And, of course, the cats were gone.

Crouched in a dark angle of wall near the front, Joe and Dulcie waited, hoping to escape, hoping one of the officers would open the door. But before they could streak away to freedom Brennan's roving light found them again. Joe snarled into the dazzle. Dulcie gave Brennan an innocent smile, her eyes wide and loving, and raised a soft paw, all sleepy-eyed sweetness. As Brennan knelt to pet her, only Joe saw, only another cat would detect deep within her green gaze, a wicked feline guile.

Behind Brennan, Wendell frowned. "Could those be the two cats from Beckwhite's? The cats that were hanging around when we found the counterfeit bills?"

"Looks like the same two. That gray one, that looks like Clyde Damen's cat."

Wendell nodded. "Maybe they wandered in before Ms. Aronson locked up-or when someone else came in, or left. That stripy one, I've seen a cat like that over around the dress shops on Dolores."

Brennan shrugged. "Go call Sicily Aronson, use the phone on the desk. See if she'll come down and check the place out before we lock up. Use your handkerchief, don't smear any prints." He knelt again and reached for Joe.

Joe raised a bladed paw, but didn't strike; he studied the officer, considering.

Stupid move, really stupid. Bloody the hand of the law, Bucko, and you're in big trouble.

He drew back his claws.

Brennan touched Joe's ear with a gentle, unthreatening finger. He was reaching to stroke Joe's back when a shout from the street sent the officer spinning around, his hand on his revolver.

The glass door rattled, shook under pounding fists. "What are you doing. That's my cat!" Clyde beat harder, and Joe thought he'd shatter the glass. "That's my cat, Brennan! Let me in."

Brennan rose, unlocked the door, and switched on the gallery lights, illuminating Clyde and Charlie.

"What the hell is this? Put down the damned gun, Brennan. How did my cat-our cats-get in here?"

Joe sat very straight, his ears erect. He was mighty relieved to see Clyde. But he wasn't going to let him know it. As Clyde moved into the gallery, Charlie stood in the doorway regarding the scene, looking from the officers to the cats with a puzzled, crooked little grin. Caught in a deliberate breaking and entering, Dulcie gave her a wide stare, then began to wash, as if all this fuss was unspeakably boring.

Clyde scooped Joe up. "How the hell did you get in here?"

Joe regarded him coldly. Clyde clutched him with unnecessary firmness, gave him a deep, penetrating stare, then glared down at Dulcie. "What the hell were you two doing?" But he looked as if he didn't want to know.

"They set off the alarm," Brennan said, "there below the glass. Must have got ten shut in by mistake-no harm done."

Charlie knelt and gathered up Dulcie, cuddling her. Dulcie lay softly against Charlie's shoulder, cutting her eyes at Joe, highly amused.

Brennan had bolstered his pistol. "Sicily's on her way down to check the place out" He nodded toward the open desk drawer. "Maybe someone was in here and left-but they must have had a key, no sign of forced entry."

Clyde stared at the open drawer. He looked at Joe. He said nothing. His eyes said plenty. He took a firmer grip on the nape of Joe's neck, his fist almost pulsing with anger.

"Sorry they made trouble, Brennan," he said pleasantly. "Damn cats, always into something."

But out on the street again, scowling into Joe's face, he said, "What the hell were you two doing in there? Can't you stay out of anything. Now what am I going to do with you? Turn you loose, you'll be right back in there.

"And I didn't plan to spend the evening baby-sitting a couple of snooping cats. I don't know why you two can't stay out of trouble. I don't see why you can't behave with some sense."

Charlie studied Clyde, puzzled. "Aren't you overreacting, maybe?"

Clyde glared.

She looked at Clyde and Joe, frowning, as if she were missing something. "We can take them over to Wilma's, shut them in the house, then we can have dinner. I'm starved."

Shifting Dulcie to a more comfortable position, she set off up the street, glancing back at Clyde. "You can't expect a cat to think what might happen if he wanders into a shop. How were they to know they couldn't get out?"

Clyde did not reply. Joe could imagine what he was thinking. Joe had a few things he'd like to say in return. He hated when he had to remain mute. It was grossly unfair for Clyde to read him off when he couldn't answer back. He dug his claws into Clyde's shoulder until Clyde drew in his breath.

As Clyde forced his finger under Joe's pads to release the offending needles, a pale blue Mercedes turned onto the street and the driver waved. Clyde lifted his hand in greeting; just one of his customers. Then he pressed Joe's pads, rotating the claws inward, releasing Joe's lethal grip, and shifted Joe away from his shoulder. The tomcat was getting out of hand. It was going to be interesting to hear Joe's explanation for this little escapade. Of course it had to do with the murder trial, he knew the single-minded compulsion of these two.

Whatever they were doing in the gallery, their adventure hadn't helped his own evening. Half an hour ago he and Charlie had been walking along holding hands like kids, joking, laughing, discussing where to have dinner. He hadn't intended to finish off the night playing free taxi to a couple of disaster-prone felines.

Having left his car at Wilma's, he and Charlie had walked up through the village into the hills as the sun set, had climbed above the last scattered houses toward the eastern mountains gleaming gold in the falling light. High up the face of a steep hill among an outcropping of boulders they sat looking down on the village spread below them, watching the sky slowly darken, watching the cottage lights blink on in sudden bursts of illumination, the village quickly coming alive, preparing for evening. They could smell wood fires; the breeze was cool, their mood peaceful and compliant. Their mellow warmth, which had lasted all the way down the hills again and into the village, was shattered suddenly by sirens. They quickened their pace, curious, heading up the street to where the squad cars had careened by…

They saw the squad car parked in front of the Aronson, spotlights sweeping the dim gallery as they approached. Then they saw the harsh beams of light fix suddenly on the two cats, catching their eyes in a blaze of fire-and Joe and Dulcie looking as guilty as any two human thieves.

He supposed, overreacting, he'd roused Charlie's curiosity, but it didn't matter. Charlie was as ignorant of the cats' true nature as the two officers.

Joe crept up Clyde's shoulder to a more comfortable position, watched Dulcie cuddling in Charlie's arms happy as a nesting bird. He kept his claws sheathed, and tentatively he rubbed his face against Clyde's ear. Clyde ignored him. Clyde sometimes had an unreasonably sour disposition.

Charlie said, "We'll drop these two off, then grab a quick hamburger. Five o'clock comes early, and tomorrow will be twelve hours or more, without Stamps. When he gets back from his little jaunt, he gets the ax; he's out of here."

Dulcie's head had come up, and, her ears up, she turned on Charlie's shoulder to stare across at Joe, her eyes wide with interest.

"Settle down," Charlie said, stroking her. "We're nearly home." She looked across to Clyde. "Did you decide what to do with Janet's diary?"

Both cats jerked to alert. Charlie frowned at Dulcie and shifted her to a more comfortable position. Clyde looked down at Joe, his grip tightening, his eyes narrowing to sudden realization.

Joe looked back innocently. So you found the diary. So now you know bow it got under Janet's deck. So do you have to look so righteous?

But at least Clyde had the decency to offer some information. "We'll have to give it to Harper. Good thing you went up to Janet's after work to leave food for her cat. Good thing the kibble box was ripped and empty, and the bowl shoved on under the deck, or you'd never have seen that plastic package."

"I still don't see why someone would hide her diary like that. Why not just steal it? If that's what they intended, why not take it with them?" She stroked Dulcie absently. "It had to be Stamps's dog that ate the food. No other dog would leave pawprints that huge.

"Do you suppose Stamps took the diary from the house? But why would he want it? And why leave it there? I'll be glad when I'm rid of Stamps. He makes me nervous."

"You need workers pretty bad to be firing Stamps just because he's taking a day off-and because his dog growls at you."

"That dog's growled at Mavity a dozen times. If he bites her, or bites anyone at work, I'm the one who gets sued. What if he bit a client? Stamps encourages that mean streak-he laughs when the dog snarls at me. Mavity's terrified of it."

Charlie sighed. "Until today Stamps has been tolerable, but today tore it. To wait until quitting time, then tell me he's taking tomorrow off, just like that, no warning. No time to find someone else. He didn't even have the decency to lie to me, to say he felt sick, just all of a sudden he had to run over to Stockton."

Joe looked across at Dulcie. Her ears were back, her tail lashing, her eyes blazed.

This was it, tomorrow was hit day. Had to be. Burglary day for seven hillside residences. Stamps was taking the day off to tend to his real business. Joe licked a whisker, watching Dulcie. She was clinging tensely to Charlie, totally wired. Charlie looked down, frowning, and began to stroke her.

"What's the matter, Dulcie? There's nothing to be afraid of. You weren't afraid in the gallery, not afraid of the police and their spotlights. Now all of a sudden… What's gotten into you?"

But Dulcie's tension wasn't fear. She was primed. Every muscle twitched, her tail lashed and trembled. The little brindle cat was all nervous energy, set to explode, burning with predatory hunger to nail those two creeps-to see cold justice overtake Stamps and Varnie.