Cat Bearing Gifts (7 page)

8

V
IC PULLED DOWN
off the highway into the village, easing the Town Car away from the main street and through the darkest neighborhoods, the narrow lanes as black as the Lincoln itself. Molena Point streets were not lighted, and here among the crowded cottages only weak lampglow shone through a few curtained windows, vaguely illuminating the nearest tree trunks. Heading a roundabout way for the stone house, the big car slid through the inky streets nearly invisible except for its low beams picking out parked cars and an occasional cat racing across. In the passenger seat Birely huddled, his arms around himself, moaning at every bump and there were plenty of those on these backstreets, potholes, and warped blacktop where tree roots pushed up, jolting even the easy-riding Lincoln. The trip down Highway One had been tense, watching for cops. There hadn't been much traffic and the Town Car stood out too clearly, making him jumpy as hell.

Leaving the scene of the wreck and moving on down the winding two-lane, they'd barely hit the flats, the highway straight and flat along the shore, when they'd heard sirens ahead. He'd turned off into a clump of eucalyptus trees, onto a narrow road that led away to a distant farmhouse. Pasture fences, faint lights way off up the hill. Waiting there on the dark dirt road for the cops and ambulance to pass, he'd done what he could for Birely, had cleaned the blood off his face with bottled water and an old rag. Birely's nose wouldn't stop bleeding, and he couldn't bear anything pressed against it. He couldn't hardly breathe, as it was. And the way he was holding his belly, whimpering, he was hurt more than a bandage could fix. When they'd left the wrecked pickup Vic had cleared out the glove compartment, had left most of the junk from the previous owner that he'd stole it from, but had pocketed a beer opener, an old pocketknife, and an out-of-date bottle of codeine prescribed in the name of the truck's owner. He'd given Birely two of those, had left the wreck trying to figure out what to do with him when they got back to Molena Point. He sure couldn't show up at a hospital emergency room driving the Lincoln; by this time, there'd be a BOL out. First thing was to get the Town Car out of sight, then decide what to do.

Waiting on the side road, he'd felt the inner pockets of his windbreaker, patting the one pack of bills he'd kept on him. Most of the money they'd found, that he'd been carrying, he'd stashed in the Lincoln itself. Rooting behind the stacked packages in the backseat, he'd pulled down the armrest and found a space lined with a plastic tray, the old folks had a couple of them little water bottles in there. Pulling the bottles out, he'd stuffed the packs of bills in, ten stacks of hundreds, all bound up in their little paper sleeves. One sleeve tore, spilling its contents, but he gathered it all, slipped the torn wrapper back on, and sandwiched it between the other packets. The hiding place, when it was covered up with packages again, would be easy enough to get to in a hurry. He still couldn't figure out if the woman Sammie'd left the place to, that Emmylou Warren, knew about Sammie's stash.

Had to, he thought, with all that carpentry work she was doing down there. Sure as hell she was going to find the money. Sammie'd told Birely, long ago, that she'd split the cash up, that she hadn't hid it all in one place. Sammie must have wanted Birely to have it, to tell him that—maybe wanted him to know about it, but not know too much, in case he turned greedy before she passed on, and came looking, nosing around maybe egged on by some “friend” he'd met on the road, Vic thought with a smile. Birely never was one to see he was being used. If she'd wanted Birely to have the money, but not while
she
was still around, she must've meant him to have the house, too. But something made her change her mind, and she wrote that will to the Warren woman instead. It didn't make sense, but people seldom made sense. He was just pulling off the street onto the dirt lane that led back through the woods to the stone building when the cell phone rang, the phone he'd taken off that old guy. It began to gong like a church bell. Birely sat up rigid, groaning with pain, staring around him like he thought he was about to receive the last rites. He came fully awake and grabbed up the phone.

“Don't answer it,” Vic snapped. “Don't
answer
the damn thing.” But Birely, groping, must have hit the speaker button.

“I didn't
answer
it,” he said. “I just . . .” A man's voice came on, soft and quiet. “Pedric? Pedric, is that you?”

“I told you not to answer.”

“I didn't, I only picked it up. What . . . ?”

“You punched something. Hang up.” Vic grabbed the phone from him.

“You picked up!”
the caller shouted.
“Say something. Pedric
?
Is this Pedric?”

Vic stopped the car among the trees, couldn't figure out how to turn the damn phone off.

“Where's Pedric?”
the voice shouted. “
Pedric, are you all right?
If this isn't Pedric, who are you? Where's Lucinda?”
Vic started punching buttons. The screen came to life rolling through all kinds of commands, but the voice kept on.
“Who is this? Why do you have Pedric's phone? Where's Lucinda? Speak up or I call the cops, they'll put a trace on you!”

“Sure it's me,” Vic said. “Who did you expect?”

There was a short silence. “
This
isn't Pedric. I want to talk to Pedric.”

Holding the phone, he wondered if the cops
could
use it to trace their location. Maybe some departments had the equipment to do that, he didn't know. But this little burg? Not likely. He tried to recall the soft, raspy voice of the man he had hit with the tire iron. Uptight-looking old guy, neatly dressed, tan sport coat, white hair in a short, military cut, white shirt and proper tie. Lowering his voice, he tried to use proper English, like the old guy would. “Of course this is Pedric, who else would have my phone? Could you tell me who is calling? We seem to have a bad connection.”

There was a long silence at the other end. The caller said no more. Vic heard him click off.

The encounter left him nervous as hell, made his stomach churn. An unidentified call, coming over a stolen phone like the damn thing had ghosts in it. Birely had curled into himself again, as if the pain were worse. His smashed nose was bleeding harder, his breath sour, breathing through his mouth. Where his face wasn't smeared with blood, he was white as milk. Vic knew, even if he stashed the Lincoln out of sight, got some other wheels and hauled Birely to an emergency room, they'd start asking questions and who knew what Birely'd say? The little wimp wasn't too swift, at best, and in the hospital, drugged up for the pain, he might tell the cops any damned thing.

It had started out as a lark, when they'd first headed over to the coast to find that wad of money that Birely swore Sammie'd stashed away, a simple trip to retrieve Birely's own rightful legacy, and the whole damn thing had gone sour. It was that run up to the city that did it, their pickup totaled, and now the cops would be after them because they'd taken the damn Lincoln. But what else could he do? He didn't
have
no other way to get Birely to a doctor, he'd tell them that, with Birely hurt so bad, and all. And that truck driver dead, which would sure as hell send the cops after them, too. They'd be all over him for that, claiming you weren't supposed to leave an accident victim. Hell, the guy was dead, it wasn't like he could have helped him none. With Birely bad hurt, what could he do but take the one working vehicle to go for help?
He
didn't kill the truck driver, the rock slide killed him.

But the old man and his skinny wife, that was another matter. If one of
them
died he'd sure be charged with murder even if he didn't hit either of them very hard, not hard enough to kill them. If they died from shock or something, was that
his
fault? And there again he'd had no choice, had to get them off his back so he could help Birely. The law never took into account extenuating circumstances, they had no feel for a person when you were really up against it. Sure as hell those two people could identify him—and would swear he'd attacked them. And now, once he'd hidden the Lincoln, what was he going to do with Birely?

It was after they'd turned back on the highway, after the cops and ambulance went by, that was when Birely had started to talk. Rambled on as they skirted the little cheap towns along the peninsula, when the codeine took hold and loosened up his tongue. Talked about how strange Sammie was when she was a child, rambled on about their old uncle, the old train robber who was close to Sammie when she was small. All so long ago that Birely wasn't even born yet. He'd heard the stories from Sammie, how the old man had robbed some government office of big bucks, hid the money and got away clean, and the feds could never pin anything on him. Back to prison on other charges, and then a year later made a prison break and took off with the money, down into Mexico.

And then, some years later, maybe with a guilty conscience, he'd shipped a big share of it back to Sammie. Birely'd grown up knowing only those parts of the story that Sammie chose to tell him, he wasn't much good at filling in the spaces between.

Easing the Lincoln on down through the woods, Vic was about to pull around to the front of the stone shed, hoping to hell he could squeeze the Lincoln into that little space that had probably been built for cows or farm machinery, when he saw a light in the yard down below, saw Emmylou Warren descending the hill, heading down from the stone house. He killed the engine, watched to see if she'd heard the car. She made no indication, didn't pause or glance back. Had she been poking around inside there? Had she seen them before they left, knew they were staying in there? That would tear it. Was she looking for the rest of the money, maybe had found some down at her place, decided when she saw them that they were looking for it, too? Birely said the original theft was two hundred thousand, a big haul, back in those days.

But maybe Emmylou Warren didn't know nothing, was just out in the yard maybe feeding those cats that hung around her. Useless creatures, what were they good for? In the light from her porch he watched her poking around down in her yard and she didn't once look his way. Dark as hell up behind the pines and heavy bushes. He watched her head up the steps to her back door, that big yellow cat walking along beside her, following her like a dog, old woman talking to it, crazy as hell, walking around in her yard in the middle of the night gabbing away to a cat, talking as if the damn thing would answer her.

9

M
ISTO GLANCED UP
twice toward the woods as he followed Emmylou up the back stairs and inside. He was quite aware of the black car that had pulled in among the trees high above the stone house, though Emmylou was not. He could smell the fumes of its exhaust drifting down, cutting through the scent of the pines, and on the riffling breath of the night he caught a whiff of blood that tweaked his curiosity. Accompanying Emmylou inside, he leaped to the sill where he could look back up the hill, studying the denser blackness among the night woods where the big car stood. Pretty nice car to be jammed in among the trees that way. He'd like to tell Emmylou to turn the porch light off so he could see better but he never spoke to her, she didn't share his secret, she was not among the few who knew the truth about the speaking cats, she was simply a kind and comfortable friend. Misto had, in fact, a number of secrets he didn't share with Emmylou Warren—though it was she who had, unwittingly, opened a new door to Misto. Had, by accident or by strange circumstance, pulled aside a curtain into the tomcat's ancient memory, had let cracks of light into a life he'd lived long before this present existence.

Maybe the memories began with the smell of the mildewed money there in Emmylou's house, often it was a smell of some sort that stirred a lost vision. The sour stink of those three packets of old bills she'd found had nudged him as if a hand had reached up from his past, poking at him, bringing back scenes from a life nearly forgotten. Or maybe it was the grainy photograph in a tin frame that had awakened those long-ago moments, the picture of a child who had, by now, already grown up, grown old, and died. Maybe that little girl's eager smile had stirred alive that lost time.

Back in February, when the cops found Sammie's body, Misto had no idea who the dead woman was but he knew her name, it stuck in his thoughts and wouldn't go away. He hadn't put it together until later, that
this
Sammie was the little child from his own past, from a life lived many cat generations before this one.

Emmylou usually left the back door open while she was working inside, replacing Sheetrock and sawing and hammering. Hearing her at work, he'd slip in for a visit with the stringy, leathery woman. With his own humans away for the week, Dr. John Firetti and his wife, Mary, off at a veterinarian conference, he'd been up here every day. He was staying with Joe Grey and the Damens, which suited him just fine: sleeping on the love seat with the big Weimaraner and little Snowball, or up in the tower with Joe. But Ryan and Clyde were busy folks, Clyde with his upscale automotive business and Ryan with her construction firm. And Joe was off at all hours with his tabby lady, following their lust for crime, hanging out with the cops at MPPD, waiting eagerly for some scuzzy human to be nailed and jailed. Sometimes, then, Misto would slip up to visit this homey and comfortable woman, to stretch out on her windowsill as she went about her work. He liked to watch her tear out cabinets and finish the walls with new Sheetrock, and Emmylou was good company. That was how he came on the picture of the child, she had moved it back onto the dresser after shifting the furniture around. He'd hopped up there to be petted, and there it was, the picture of a child that so shocked him he let out a strange, gargling mewl.

“That's Sammie,” Emmylou had said, looking down at him. “Sammie when she was little, so many years ago. My goodness, cat, you look frightened. How could an old picture scare you?”

The photo was sepia toned, and grainy. The child was dressed in an old-fashioned pinafore, crisply ironed, and little patent-leather shoes with a strap across the instep, over short white socks. He had known this child, he remembered her running through the grass beside a white picket fence, he could see her bouncing on her little bed with the pink ruffled spread, he could hear her laughing. Those moments from another life crowded in at him in much the same way he remembered fragments from a long-ago medieval village, scenes so clear and sudden he could smell offal in the streets and the stink of boiled cabbage and the rain-sodden rot of thatched rooftops.

Here in Emmylou's house, the time of Sammie's childhood grew so real he could smell the bruised grass on her little shoes, could feel her warmth when he curled up close to her, the softness of her baby skin, the smell of little girl and hot cocoa and peppermints, the sticky feel of peanut butter on her small fingers. How strange to think about that lost time. How clearly he remembered the humid Southern summers, the buzz of cicadas at night, the days as hot as hell itself, and so muggy your fur was never really dry. How had he been drawn here to this place where, so many long years later, the grown-up Sammie had lived and died?

Soon he wasn't going off with Joe Grey at all, or even with his son, Pan, but heading up alone to see Emmylou and revisit those memories that so stirred him, to sit on the dresser looking at little Sammie while Emmylou hammered and sawed and talked away, and all the while it was Sammie's young voice he wished he could hear.

He wasn't sure how many of his nine cat lives he had spent, and he wasn't sure what came after. Some of his lives were only vague sparks, bright moments or ugly, a scene, a few words spoken, and then gone again. Only his life with Sammie was so insistent. As each new memory nudged him, another piece of that life fell into place, toward whatever revelation he was meant to see, another moment teasing his sharp curiosity.

But tonight, crouched on Emmylou's windowsill, a different kind of curiosity gripped Misto, too. He waited patiently until he saw the black car move on again down through the woods, following the lane that led to the old, narrow shed beneath the stone house. Misto guessed, with its wide, hinged doors, it was a kind of garage, maybe built for farm tractors or a Model A. Did the driver expect to fit that big car in there? Not likely, not that long, sleek vehicle. Though in the reflection of light from Emmylou's back porch he could see dents and scrapes in the fenders, too, and a loose front bumper. The driver stepped out, left the motor running, the taller of the two men he'd seen coming up there before, shaggy brown ponytail hanging down the back of his dark windbreaker.

He opened the heavy swinging doors, got back in and, amazingly, he pulled the car on inside. It was a tight fit, barely enough room for him to help his companion out, the shorter man stumbling, and that's where the smell of blood came from. Blood smeared down his face, soaking into the rag he held to his nose. Moving up the stone steps to the room above, he bore much of his weight on the wooden rail. The taller man closed the shed doors, replaced the padlock, and followed him up. Watched him struggle into the house but didn't help him. The door closed behind them. Misto heard the lock snap home.

No lights came on inside, except the faintest glow as if they had an electric lantern up there. Wanting to see more, Misto dropped from Emmylou's windowsill to the floor and trotted out through the old cat door that was cut in the back door. Emmylou's own three cats used it, wild creatures he thought might have been feral, who came and went as they chose. Galloping up the hill and up the stone stairs, through the men's scent, he leaped to the stone sill beside the door, peered in through the dirty glass.