Cat Laughing Last (16 page)

R
ehearsal was
over. Everyone but Cora Lee had left the theater. Mark King had closed the piano and departed reluctantly, worrying about Cora Lee, standing backstage holding her hands, his round face flushed with anger and concern.

“I'll be fine, Mark. I just want to sit here for a few minutes alone, in the quiet theater. Guess this part meant more to me than I thought,” she said, laughing.

“There's nothing I can say about this. It's incredible. I'm hoping something will happen to change Traynor's mind,” he said darkly, then turned and moved away through the dressing rooms.

The kit heard the back door slam. When Cora Lee sat down on a folding chair near the piano, the little tortoiseshell came out from the shadows and crawled up into her lap. Around them, the empty theater seemed to echo with the spirits that had been summoned from the past—and with the tensions, with the inexplicable tradeoff for which Mark King and Cora Lee had no answers. The kit reached a paw, touching Cora Lee's cheek.

“All right,” she told the kit. “Let someone else play
Catalina. But does it have to be Fern Barth! Fern will destroy Catalina. I do love the story, I love the songs, Kit. I feel so close to Catalina—I don't want her story made ugly and common.”

She hugged the kit close. “Maybe after Traynor's dead,” she said coldly, “if he is indeed dying, there'll be a real performance somewhere of
Thorns of Gold.
But not for me, Kit. It will be too late for me.

“I'm sixty-four years old. I keep myself in shape, but there's a limit. Maybe Vivi Traynor's right, maybe I'm already too old.”

Cora Lee wondered—was it possible that, for some reason she didn't understand, Vivi didn't want this play produced? She looked around the empty theater. “There are ghosts here, Kit. All the ghosts of plays past, people who have been brought alive here. Did you know that?”

The kit knew. She climbed to Cora Lee's shoulder, nosing at her cheek.

“Emotions so powerful, Kit, that they're part of the old walls, even part of the plywood sets that we cut up and use over and over until there's nothing left but chips. All those lives are here. And now, is Fern's saccharine version of Catalina going to join them?”

She rose abruptly, settling the kit more securely on her shoulder. “Well, I can't help it. I can't make anything different, I can't unmake whatever twisted motives Vivi and Elliott Traynor follow.” She cuddled the little cat close. “It isn't losing the part that makes me cry, Kit. I cry from anger, always have. Anger at unfairness, at human coldness. Why would Elliott Traynor butcher his own play?

“When I was little, Kit, in second grade, we had a teacher who baited us unmercifully. Prodded us, bore
down on us, accused us of things we didn't do, ridiculed and beat us down until she made me cry out of pure rage.”

Cora Lee looked down into the kit's round yellow eyes. “I've always been like that. I'm irate when I feel helpless, when I feel used.” She touched the kit's nose with her nose. “Can you understand, Kit, how it is to cry with anger when you feel helpless?”

The kit understood. She knew exactly how that felt. The smallest cat in the band of roving cats she'd traveled with, she'd been the butt of them all, two dozen big, cruel felines who delighted in tormenting her, who abandoned her in alleys, who drove her away from whatever food they found to fight over. She knew how helplessness felt. But she couldn't tell Cora Lee that.

“On the streets, in New Orleans, when bigger kids ganged up and hit us and wouldn't let us go, and no grown-up would help us, that made me cry—with pure temper, because no big person would help us.” Cora Lee laughed. “I got so mad sometimes that I broke things. Threw china at the wall. That wasn't civilized, but no one took the time to teach us about being civil. Throwing china was the only way I knew to drive away the demons and make me feel better.”

The kit shivered. The look in Cora Lee's black eyes was so deep it was like falling into bottomless chasms.

“You make me feel better, Kit. You're good company. You listen and don't try to destroy me. Could I take you home with me tonight? It's just at the other end of the building. I don't like to leave you alone in the theater, and I won't turn you out in the dark. Would Wilma mind?” She looked at the kit, puzzled. “What makes you come here, Kit? What draws you here?”

The kit purred and kneaded her mottled black-and-brown paws gently into Cora Lee's shoulder, careful to keep her claws tucked in.

Cuddling the kit, Cora Lee went backstage to the wall phone beside the dressing rooms, and in the soft light, she dialed Wilma's number. The kit lay her face against Cora Lee's cheek to listen, feeling deliciously secretive and smug, her fluffy tail twitching with pleasure.

“Your tattercoat kit is here, Wilma. In the theater.”

“I'm not surprised,” Wilma said, laughing. “Shall I come get her?”

“She's been here since early in the tryouts. Could I keep her overnight? She's…we're friends. I have cold roast chicken and milk custard, if you think that would agree with her.”

The kit smiled and snuggled down with contentment.

“Those delicacies are certainly allowed,” Wilma said. “You'd better have your share first, or she'll eat it all. How did tryouts go?”

“Could we talk about that tomorrow? I…didn't get the part.”

“I don't believe that.”

“I…” Cora Lee's voice trembled.

“Tomorrow,” Wilma said. “Take the kit home. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. Just need some rest. I'm going to feed the kit and myself, have a hot bath, and get into bed. I'll bring her home in the morning.”

“Have another towel handy. She likes to dabble her paws in the tub. Give her something that floats, and she'll have the whole bathroom soaked, splashing at it.”

Cora Lee laughed. The kit didn't see anything funny.
Hanging up, Cora Lee carried the kit over her shoulder as she turned out the last light and then locked the back door behind her. Heading past several closed shops with their softly lit windows, a dress shop, a toy store, a knitting studio, she turned up a lighted stair tucked between two parts of the building. Climbing two flights, with the kit snuggling against her chin, she moved along an open balcony overlooking the street. Unlocking the third door, she switched on a lamp and shut the door tightly behind her. She set the kit down on a creamy leather sofa so soft that the kit rolled and rubbed her face into the pillows.

The room was done all in almond and white and café au lait—ice cream colors, the kit thought. She liked that; this room made her purr. Cora Lee opened a tall, whitewashed music center, and put on a CD of soft jazz. She gave the kit a little smile, as if maybe she had come to some kind of decision. The kit couldn't ask to share her secret.

The small kitchen had a creamy tile floor and white cabinets. Cora Lee fixed a plate for each of them, poured a glass of wine for herself, and carried their tray into the living room, putting the kit's plate on the hearth and her own dinner on the coffee table.

 

Cora Lee ate slowly, relaxing in the music she loved and in the company of the little cat. It was nice to have a special animal to share her supper, it had been some years since she'd had a pet, since she'd put her dear old spaniel to sleep. She still missed him. She'd depended on him a lot when she was newly widowed, in those months just after Robert died.

Robert was killed on their thirtieth anniversary in a plane accident, on his way to meet her for a week in the Sierras as an anniversary present. She had never felt quite whole since. But she had not felt, until recently, the true fear of being alone as she grew older, fear of the approaching years when she might be ill and need assistance, and had no one to help her, no family. That sense of helplessness had made her take a hard look at her life.

Was their Senior Survival plan going to work? Was this going to be a practical solution for all of them?

“It sure beats paying five thousand dollars a month, Kit, in a retirement home. I couldn't do that. All of us have too much money to go on welfare, and too little to pay those kinds of prices. We're caught in the middle, Kit.”

She thought that, with the right legal setup, they could make something better for themselves. Watching the kit lapping up custard, she wished the little cat could understand what she was saying, she seemed such a sympathetic little soul. Rising, she went to the kitchen to dish up more custard, hoping she wouldn't make the kit sick. Wilma was right, this little cat ate like a St. Bernard.

Returning, she refilled her wineglass and turned down the lamp. Could four or five women living together really get along? Was that going to work; would they make the necessary decisions without bickering? If they could hire someone to cook and clean and care for them when they were older, would they find someone they could trust? But they were civil people. And they had three trustees picked out to handle many of the problems.

When the kit had licked up the last of the custard, Cora Lee took their dishes to the kitchen, washed them in hot soapy water, and put them in the drain. “Come on, Kit. I'm bushed.”

She ran a hot bath, found a sponge to float for the kit, and spent more time laughing than relaxing. She mopped up the water afterward with four big towels, wondering where this little cat had sprung from, who was so different and amusing. They were in bed by midnight, snuggled together.

As Cora Lee's breathing slowed toward sleep, the kit lay looking around her at the carved, whitewashed bedroom furniture, at the sheer white curtains blowing across the open window. Even the paintings on the walls were cream toned. What a pity that Cora Lee would have to leave this apartment when the ladies all moved in together. These bright rooms with their café au lait carpet soft under her paws, and the jazz music and cold chicken and custard, this was a lovely place to live. The kit liked it all so much, that she couldn't stop purring. And, purring, she drifted off into dreams.

But in her dreams she was standing on a strange sidewalk, in a strange part of the village and there was blood on the concrete along with broken glass. Afraid, she woke mewling and pressing tightly against Cora Lee.

But it was a dream, only a nightmare like when she was small and the big cats made her sleep alone in the cold behind the garbage cans and she had bad, bad dreams.

Only then there had been no one to hold her. Now there was someone safe, and she burrowed closer under Cora Lee's chin, safe with Cora Lee, and warm.

F
og softened
the lines of the long, two-story building, the milky dawn seeming almost to have absorbed its pale walls. The structure was, in fact, two buildings, with a narrow walkway between. The first floors housed various small businesses, including a cell-phone repair shop, and an upholsterer. Offices and apartments occupied the second floor. Of the seven cars parked diagonally at the curb before the Pumpkin Coach Charity Shop, four were frosted with water drops as if they had stood there all night. Cora Lee French's green '92 Chevy was dry and faintly dusty, and the engine and hood were still warm. The driver's door stood open, the keys in the ignition. Cora Lee's purse lay on the seat.

The Pumpkin Coach was a favorite village institution, staffed by volunteers who arranged and sold the used books and furniture and clothes that were donated, the paintings and tableware and office equipment and children's toys and every kind of bric-a-brac from Chinese cloisonné and old pewter to Mexican glassware, all gifts from upscale Molena Point house
holds that were moving or changing decor. The shop's annual income, more than $200,000, was given in total to Molena Point charities—the boys and girls clubs, the Scouts, County Animal Shelter, Meals for the Elderly, and over two dozen other like organizations. At peak hours the Pumpkin Coach was so busy that visitors found it hard to snag a parking place in the large lot. Now, at 6:00 A.M., the shop, of course, was closed.

Cora Lee's car was not reflected in the large front window of the Pumpkin Coach, though it stood not ten feet from it, just across the sidewalk. None of the cars was mirrored there, nor were the trees that edged the parking lot, or the houses and shops across the street. The window could reflect nothing; its plate glass lay shattered across the paving, its jagged shards reflecting only the milky sky. Sharp pieces of broken glass stuck up from the window frame like knife blades.

The shop's window was done up each Monday night with particularly appealing items, usually arranged on some theme. On Tuesday, viewers could enjoy the display, read the price list, and make their selections. They would return on Wednesday morning to hand over their cash and record their names on the “sold” list, often having to stand in line for the privilege. They would pick up their merchandise the following week, after the window was changed. Though the shop didn't open until 10:00, the first arrivals might be there before 7:00, bringing their camp chairs, intent on being first in line.

The Pumpkin Coach was a mecca for the ladies of the Senior Survival club. They tried to rotate their visits so one or the other dropped by several times a day as new donations were put out. Usually Cora Lee took the Tuesday morning run to check out the contents of
the new window display. This morning was the same as usual; she had stopped to check the window on her way to take the kit home—and had looked on the scene startled.

Within the display, broken glass sparkled across the small and handsome caned writing desk that held center stage and across the embroidered table cover tossed casually over one end. There was nothing on the desk, but three indentations had been left in the folded cover. Behind the desk hung five paintings and seven carved toys, all skewed aside where the backdrop had been pulled awry, revealing the dark shop behind.

At the foot of the desk Fern Barth lay unmoving, the wounds in her chest and shoulder bleeding into the spills of shattered glass, her blond hair flecked with glass, her fingers clutching a fragment of old, faded ribbon. Cora Lee stood looking, feeling cold, her hands shaking, and for a long moment she didn't know what to do.

 

Joe Grey and Dulcie got their first look at the morning paper as they returned from a midnight hunt. The
Molena Point Gazette
lay folded on a driveway, the front page partially visible. Hastily they pawed the paper open, crouching over the picture.

The Pumpkin Coach was enjoying extra publicity; the shop's display was featured prominently, its window nearly filling the space above the fold—a picture that, if they were right, was going to cause plenty of activity in the village, and not all of it welcome.

Since midnight they had stalked rats beneath the low, dense foliage of a dwarf juniper forest. The deco
rative conifers covered a residential hillside, a mass of three-foot-high bushes so thick-growing that even in the silver dawn the world beneath had been without light, its prickly tangle of interlaced branches stretching away in pure blackness. The warm, sandy earth beneath was riddled with rat holes—a hunting preserve for the small and quick.

Their breakfast catch had consisted of two fat rats and a small rabbit. They could have killed many more, but they couldn't eat any more. Leaving the bony parts and the skin and fur, they had spent leisurely moments washing their paws and whiskers, then wound their way out of the dark jungle, their eyes shuttered and their ears back to avoid the tiny, prickly twigs. They came out onto the concrete drive just below a two-story house whose shades were still drawn. The cats' coats smelled sharply of juniper, and their mouths were filled with the rusty aftertaste of rat. It was as they padded down the damp concrete drive toward the street below that the morning paper caught their attention.

Thanks to the cheaper production costs of modern technology, the photo was in full color. It showed three carved wooden chests sitting on an embroidered table cover atop a small writing desk in the shop window. Joe pawed the paper open to the article, his dark gray ears sharp forward, his yellow eyes keen with interest. He glanced up once at the windows of the house but saw no one, and heard no sound. Flattening the pages with quick paws, they crowded together side by side to read. Any neighbor peering out would suppose the kitties had found a mealy bug or some such innocuous creature in the damp folds of newsprint and were about to eat or torment it. The article held their full attention.

“What do they mean by primitive?” Joe said.

“Rough, bold. Not all refined and polished,” Dulcie said knowledgeably. Her green eyes widened. “Don't they look Spanish? Could these be three of the Ortega-Diaz chests? Sitting in the Iselman house for how many years?”

“Not likely. Wouldn't Casselrod have known about them, tried to buy them?”

“Maybe he did try, we don't know. And did the Iselmans know about the letters? Would they have thought to look for some hidden compartment, like the white chest had?”

The cats looked at each other and took off down the drive heading for the Pumpkin Coach. Galloping through the fog across the empty residential streets, brushing through flowerbeds and trampling a delicate
stand of Icelandic poppies, racing through patios and gardens, they had nearly reached the two long buildings standing end to end that housed the charity shop when a pale car pulled out of the street behind, coming straight for them. Dodging across the sidewalk into a recessed entry, they crouched against the door of a tile shop. Joe got one good glimpse of the license.

“Got the first four digits. 2ZJZ. A tan Infinity.”

They stood looking after the vanished driver, then raced down the narrow brick walk between the two buildings, approaching the front of the charity shop. Somewhere in the village, a siren screamed, not uncommon in the early morning hours. Galloping past parked cars whose metal bodies exuded chill, they passed a car still warm, a green Chevy with the driver's door open.

“Cora Lee's car?” Dulcie said.

Joe glanced in, catching Cora Lee's scent, wondering why she had left the door open, and where she was. Skirting the glass that glinted across the sidewalk, warily he approached the shop window.

They could smell blood, and the sweet scent of candy. Circling around the glass, the cats reared up to look.

Fern Barth lay in the window, the blood from her wounds turning dark. Joe, leaping up over the jagged teeth of glass that protruded from the sill, stepping carefully around the blood and debris, put his nose to hers.

She wasn't breathing but she was faintly warm. He was backing away when sirens came screaming and a squad car and an emergency vehicle careened around the corner. Joe sailed out of the window over the
ragged glass and behind the potted plants that stood before the shop. The cats were never able to shake their need to hide—and maybe for good reason. Max Harper wasn't unaware of cats showing up at a scene, of cat hairs clinging to evidence, of paw prints where they should not have been.

An officer swung out of the car, gun drawn, scanning the area, leaving his partner behind the wheel. From the ambulance, two medics stepped up into the shop window as if they knew exactly where to go. As the officer on foot checked the parked cars, the police unit took off toward the back street, apparently to circle the building. The officer on foot approached the green Chevy. Looking inside, he didn't touch anything. He checked the backseat, but didn't close the door. As he checked out the other cars, Joe and Dulcie slipped through the shadows to the bushes that lined the walk between the buildings. There, Joe tried to pull glass from his paws, dragging his pads across the small branches to dislodge clinging shards, then plucking some out with his teeth, spitting glass into the dirt, his ears back with annoyance.

The officer on foot had left the cars and moved up into the window, they heard him walk on back inside the shop. The minute he was gone, Joe sped for the Chevy and leaped into the seat.

He sniffed at Cora Lee's purse, but when he smelled the dash and the cell phone, he shook his head with disbelief. Dropping out again, he returned to the bushes, to Dulcie.

“The kit's scent is all over the phone.”

“The kit made the emergency call?”

“Apparently. She's watched us enough times.”

“So where is she? She stayed with Cora Lee last night. Where is Cora Lee? Oh, she's not in the shop! Lying hurt in there! But what happened?” Dulcie peered out toward the shattered display window, then turned to look at Joe, her eyes wide. “Or did she…? Oh, but Cora Lee wouldn't…”

Joe just looked at her.

“She was really hurt when she lost the part,” Dulcie whispered. “Angry at Traynor, at Vivi, at Sam Ladler—she must have hated Fern. But she wouldn't…”

Joe was busy sniffing the bushes. “Cora Lee brushed by here. So did the kit. Come on.”

They followed the scents of woman and cat up the brick walk and around to the street behind the Pumpkin Coach, where the shop's back door opened. The empty street smelled of car exhaust. They didn't see the officer on foot, nor was the squad car in sight. As they approached the small, blind utility alley just beyond the Pumpkin Coach, the scents they followed deepened. They could see nothing in the short dead-end alley but a heap of wadded white paper down at the end piled between the trash cans.

But something else was there, besides paper. They glimpsed dark hair among the white, and a tan arm. Then they saw the kit crouched over the figure, pawing at her, trying to wake her.

Cora Lee lay among the rubble, her white dress twisted, her face grayish and sick. When the kit saw Joe and Dulcie she bolted into them mewling.

“She's dead. Oh, she's not dead! Oh, help her!”

Sirens screamed again as another squad car roared through the side streets. Pushing the kit away, Joe nosed at Cora Lee trying to detect breathing. Yes, a
faint, warm breath, though her skin was chilled.

“She's alive, Kit. We need the medics, the cops. But you called—”

“From Cora Lee's car phone like you showed me. I told them there was a dead woman in the window.”

“You told them Cora Lee was here?”

“She wasn't—I didn't know she was here. Just that Fern woman in the window.”

“Stay with her, Kit. Stay until we—”

But Dulcie had already raced away, headed for Cora Lee's car and cell phone.