Cat Playing Cupid (10 page)

A
BOVE THE RACING CATS
,
the Molena Point hills rose green with new grass, their emerald curves bright against heavy gray clouds; the damp grass soaked the cats' paws and fur as they raced ever higher above the village.
If a cat had wings,
Dulcie thought, running beside Joe and Kit,
we'd
fly
over the hills, we'd see all our haunts below us, see all our world laid out…The scattered gardens and the dark oak woods, the red roofs of Casa Capri where those helpless old people were murdered. Janet Jeannot's studio, burned down when she was killed. We'd see Mama's house where I played lost kitty to spy on her crooked son, we'd see all the houses we've tossed, finding evidence. And just up there,
she thought, pausing and rearing up to look,
I'd see the broom bushes where Joe and I first met, where the moment we stood so close, face-to-face, after I'd watched him in the village, the moment he was so close to me, I knew that I loved him. And there above us,
she thought, swerving closer to Joe through the fresh, damp grass,
there where the ruins rise up like broken towers, there's where Charlie shot the man who kidnapped her.

Soon their paws pounded through the rubble of broken stone walls where they'd once seen a cougar, the beautiful prowling cougar that might have eaten them.
The cougar,
Dulcie thought, glancing at Kit,
who so enchanted the tattercoat that she touched him while he slept—and then ran like hell.

Up the last steep incline, racing up, they stopped at the foot of the first garden wall, broken and rough, a relic of jagged stone, beyond which the old house rose up among its tangles of half-dead oak trees. All three cats were thinking of what they would find, of the human body, lost and forgotten, a forgotten soul all alone among the decaying buildings.

Weeds grew tangled among old and dying bushes, crowding against the sides of the rambling, two-story mansion. At the front of the great house, where walls had crumbled away, the rooms stood open to the world like a stage, revealing peeling wallpaper and broken, moldering furniture: the hoary set of a macabre theatrical production that seemed about to begin, that waited for them, chill and silent—then the off-key blather of a house finch broke the spell, and from the fields beyond, the bright crystal song of a meadowlark. Then the lark's song was rudely hushed by the harsh cawing of a crow that perched ahead of them on the mossy roof, staring belligerently, his bright glare keenly accusing, his raucous voice scolding indignantly the presence of invading cats.

Rearing up, Joe eyed the big black bird. “You thought all the cats left here? You're telling us to go, too? Too bad, buddy. Come on down if you don't like the drill. We'll put an end to your misery.”

Dulcie smiled. “Count me out. I'd as soon eat vulture.” The crow cawed rudely. Kit studied him, lashing her fluffy tail as if
she
would surely eat him. But then, forgetting the nervy bird, she raced away toward the back of the mansion, toward the kitchen and the old cellars and the grotto that was their destination. Joe and Dulcie followed.

Paying attention to Willow's directions as Charlie had repeated them, moving past the kitchen and around the house among tangles of broken walls and overgrown bushes, they trotted under tall, dirty windows that had once sparkled with candlelight and with flickering flames from the hearth.

Rounding a jutting wall, they came to the small terrace sheltered between two wings of the house, a space just large enough for a bit of garden, a moss-covered stone bench, and, perhaps at one time, an outdoor tea table and chairs, furniture that would long since have rusted away or been destroyed by storms. The terrace bricks were dark with decades of dirt and overgrown with moss. On two sides of the sheltered terrace were raised planting beds but on the third, against the house, a sinkhole opened into a crumbled cellar.

Nearer them, flanking the terrace, a weedy garden plot had been freshly dug into, the disturbed earth crisscrossed with paw prints.

As Joe and Dulcie stood looking, and scenting the earth, at the side of the terrace Kit looked into the house through cracked French doors, pressing her nose to the grimy glass. Within lay an old-fashioned bedchamber that had once been elegant. She could see a smooth stone fireplace, a cream-colored Victorian bed, a toppled dresser, a matching dressing table and little chair, and a carved
dressing screen that lay fallen against the rotting silk bedspread. The bed's silk canopy hung in shreds as delicate as spiderwebs. Kit imagined an elegant woman wrapped in a diaphanous dressing gown, coming out into the garden to sip tea among the ferns and flowers where, now, the planter beds held only weeds, dead leaves, and an overgrown jasmine that had tangled itself over dead bushes.

Dulcie joined her, and the lady cats were still a moment, filled with dreams of being human ladies, Dulcie dreaming of silk and velvet garments and cashmere wraps, as she had dreamed all her life. Not until Joe huffed softly did the two give up their fantasies, and the cats began to dig in the flower bed where the earth had already been dug, Joe and Dulcie carefully pawing away the rotted leaves and earth so as not to disturb the frail bones that surely lay beneath—but Kit, in her enthusiasm, kicked out earth like a dog.

Joe stopped her. “You're destroying evidence. You know better.”

She hung her head.

It was Dulcie, going slowly, with gentle paws, who soon stroked something small and rigid. She stopped digging, and delicately brushed away the earth until, at their feet, lay little dark bones clean of flesh and stained brown by the earth, seeming as frail as the bones of a long-dead bird.

The sight of a human hand so diminished and helpless sickened Dulcie. She turned away and sat down, her head down, her ears down, her heart feeling empty.

This was not the first human grave they'd ever found, and the other graves had upset her even more, for they
had held the bones of little children. That memory had stayed with her in nightmares, and now it returned again, to leave her shivering.

Why does this upset me so? The bones of animals don't bother me, the bones of rats and mice or of a dead deer in the forest, they are just natural bones.

But a dead human is nothing like a dead animal
.
The remains of a dead human should be treated with respect, should not be hidden and abandoned. A human body without proper burial, a proper marker, without ceremony and closure, is a tragedy of disrespect. As if that's all there is to a human, these moldering bones, and nothing more at all.

Seeing her distress, Joe pressed close to her and licked her ear, his silver coat gleaming in the slant of early morning sun. Dulcie's green eyes were filled with mystery. “Were cats
meant
to find this grave?” she whispered. “First the ferals found it. And then we came…Were we meant to come here?”

Joe just looked at her. He didn't like that kind of question. He began to dig again, carefully but steadily, until he had uncovered the side of the skull and then a line of spine defining the throat. He tried to work as carefully as he knew the coroner would; and soon his digging paw revealed the outer rim of the shoulder. Joe had begun to uncover the arm when suddenly he stopped.

Dulcie and Kit moved closer and the three cats stood transfixed, their eyes on the frail wrist—on the bracelet that circled the wrist, still half buried in earth. It was a wide gold band embossed with the image of a cat. A rearing cat, just as Willow had described, a cat holding out its front paw as if beseeching, or perhaps commanding.

“Where is the other cat?” Dulcie whispered. “Willow said—”

“On the lintel,” Kit said. “There, over the French doors to the bedchamber. Same cat, with its paw out.”

Who was this woman, so fond of cats that she wore a feline signet? That she had the same cat carved over her bedchamber? If that
was
her bedchamber, if this wasn't a stranger buried here.

But a stranger whose bracelet showed the same cat as on the lintel? Not likely.

At last they covered up the poor, vulnerable body, and with careful strokes they roughed up the loose earth until they had destroyed all the paw prints—their own, and those of the ferals.

“One thing for sure,” Dulcie said, “we can't report the body—the department knows there are cats up here. Those guys are already too curious since seeing the ferals attack Charlie's kidnappers.”

“Why do we
have
to report it?” Kit said. “Who knows how long that body's been here? What difference…?”

Joe and Dulcie turned to look at her. “Someone,” Dulcie said sternly, “wants to know what happened to this woman.”

“But what about the book?” Kit said. “The book Willow found? Maybe that will tell us.” And the tattercoat leaped across the garden toward the dark fissure where the wall had caved into the cellar.

“Don't, Kit!” Dulcie cried. “Don't go down—” But Kit had already disappeared into the dark hole among the fallen stones—and before Joe could snatch Dulcie back
she had leaped after her, disappearing in the blackness. Joe was poised at the brink, ready to go down, or haul them out, when with considerable thrashing they emerged again dragging a small, heavy-looking box between them.

It was made of dark wood, and when they had pawed open the lid to reveal a leather packet, then had clawed open the packet, they found inside a package wrapped in frail and yellowed cloth. They could see where Willow had unwrapped the thin linen and then rewrapped it, where the cloth was folded differently, revealing darker creases. Several white cat hairs were caught in the folds. There were no markings on the box, or on the leather packet.

Lifting out the wrapped book, they laid it on paper, which they had spread on the bricks. The leather cover was old and dry, and was embossed in gold:
Folktales of Speaking Cats and a History of Certain Rare Encounters.

“No one,” Dulcie hissed angrily, “
no one
should write about speaking cats.” The author's name was Thomas Bewick. What cruel impulse had made this man reveal their secret? Why had he done such a thing?

But despite its content, the book was frail and beautiful, and Dulcie's touch was feather soft as she turned the dry, yellowed pages.

At the beginning of each chapter was the color etching of a cat, each with a motto or homily.

The cats read in silence, scanning the passages, and soon Dulcie's tension eased and she began to purr: These stories were only myths and folktales, all were innocent enough, folktales about magical cats written in a fairy-tale manner that no human would take for fact. That was all the book would be to the uninitiated, a collection of fairy tales, stories about cats who spoke to kings, cats who vanished into cavernous worlds beneath the earth, cats who led lost children from war-torn medieval cities. Indeed, their own ancient heritage lay between these pages, but so well disguised that few humans would dream there was truth to the stories.

Dulcie and Kit were transfixed, but the tales made Joe edgy, turned him increasingly irritable; he didn't have the temperament for this, his yellow eyes burned with impatience.

It was enough for Joe to live in the here and now, he didn't need fairy tales to explain himself. The world could take him or not, as it chose, and to hell with the past, he preferred to leave all foolish conjecture to dreamers—and Dulcie preferred Joe just as he was. A tough, practical tomcat who faced the world straight on. A four-legged cop who hid very well the tender streak deep within.

“And what,” the tomcat said, staring at the gold-embossed volume, “what do we do with this? There's nothing safe
to
do with it, Dulcie. Except bury it again. It's too heavy to carry, and we can't let someone find it.”

Dulcie looked dismayed. “We can't leave it here, it will rot.”

“It hasn't rotted yet.”

“It's old and frail, Joe. I don't think—”

“If we carry and drag it down the hills, we'll rip the leather, tear the pages. And if we haul it in the box, we'll need our little cat spines adjusted.”

She sat down and washed a front paw.

She wanted this book, she wanted to read the rest of it. Wanted to look into the back pages, wanted…

Joe Grey sat down beside her and licked her whiskers. “I guess if you want it that bad,” he said softly, “Charlie can get it for us.”

Dulcie looked at him uncertainly. “Charlie hasn't been up here since she was kidnapped. She doesn't come here anymore.”

“She will for this. She will if we nudge her. She
has
to be wondering about the book. She has to be as curious as we were. Do you think, after Willow told her there was a book about speaking cats, that she isn't wild to see it?”

Dulcie looked at him bleakly. “Maybe she won't
want
to come up here, where she shot that man. She's already worried about how to report this grave. Maybe—”

“Leave it to me,” Joe said, smiling a sly, tomcat smile. “I have a trade for Charlie. A trade that will make her happy to do what we ask. She'll fetch the book, and she'll do it gladly.”

C
HARLIE STOOD
at the top of the cliff watching the sea, thinking about little Sage. It was nearly noon and the tide was coming in, the waves crashing and foaming against the rocks far below, turning them glistening black; the surf's wild and gigantic power, the vastness of the sea and of the earth itself, made a creature as small and hurt as Sage seem to her all the more helpless.

The fear and confusion that that little wild cat must have felt coming out of the anesthetic, waking in a strange world inside a building, not remembering how he got there, finding himself in a cage, hurting and sick and afraid. Even with Dulcie there to calm him, he must have been terrified.

Well, but he was being gently cared for now, with a special understanding that the young cat would find in no other doctor. She was still amazed that for all these years, John Firetti had looked upon the speaking cats as a natural part of his life.

It was strange, too, that she, when she first discovered
the truth about the cats, had felt that such cats should have been a part of her life all along, that not knowing about them had left something incomplete in her world, left it flat and dull. She'd not been surprised that, once she shared the cats' secret, a buoyant feeling of richness had filled so many of her life's empty spaces.

She thought about the day she and Ryan and Hanni had been returning from their weeklong pack trip, riding home across the open hills, the day that Willow and her wild band first appeared to her, slipping out of the pine forest.

Glimpsing the little phantom beings secretly following her, wonder had gripped her, the same thrill that had touched her the night Willow had come to her, needing her, trusting her enough to seek her out.

Now, turning away from the cliff's edge, she stepped back into the Blazer and headed down the hills to Dr. Firetti's clinic, down Highway 1, a left at Ocean and a left again at Beckwhite's Fine Cars, where she glanced absently at Clyde's automotive garage.

Clyde and Ryan on their honeymoon
, she thought, amused. She'd never thought it would happen. No little beforehand hints, no asking for help picking out rings, no sharing of plans and secrets, though the three of them were close friends. The two had been dating for a while, but Clyde had dated a long string of women, including Charlie herself.

But then, Christmas Day, Clyde had started calling all their friends with the big announcement. Wilma said Dulcie had been so surprised she nearly did flips. The little tabby had just clawed the wrapping off her Christmas gift, which turned out to be Charlie's portrait of Joe Grey, so she was already giddy, wired with excitement when they
heard Clyde's news. To learn that he had actually proposed, that he and Ryan meant to take the big step…no one had thought it would happen.

Parking at the side of the clinic, she paused to retie her red hair with its ragged ribbon, then grabbed her package off the seat, got out, and locked the car. She had brought half a rare filet for Sage, from last night's dinner. Through the clinic's front window, she could see Wilma inside the crowded waiting room.

The door was blocked by a man in shorts and sandals trying to pull his basset hound away from a pair of fluffy “designer” mutts, while a black cat in a carrier hissed angrily. At the other side of the cheerful room, with its wicker chairs and hanging plants, Wilma was chatting with the receptionist, dark-haired Audrey Cane, about Audrey's young German shepherd; Audrey was radiant with pride in the dog's talents, was sharing her plans for his training when John Firetti came out and led Wilma and Charlie back to the small, quiet recovery room.

Sage lay in his large cage, the wire door propped open, looking helpless in his bandages. When he saw Charlie and Wilma, his eyes brightened and he got clumsily to his feet, wobbling in his cast; the doctor reached to steady him.

“Get him to drink all he can,” Dr. Firetti told them as he lifted Sage into Wilma's carrier, onto a soft blanket. “You shouldn't have a problem getting him to eat, he's hungry as a wolf. Aren't you, Sage?” He looked seriously at Charlie. “Max doesn't know about the cats?”

“He doesn't need to know,” Charlie said. “Later, when Sage comes up to us, we'll be careful only to talk when we're sure Max is gone. Sage will have a nice bed in my stu
dio, and another in our bedroom at night. I'll tell Max he's a stray I've seen hanging around, that I found him hurt.”

“And how will you explain that you didn't ever tell him about this stray, when you tell Max about every animal that comes around the ranch, the wild fox you like to draw, the skunk…You've drawn them all, and Max has seen them all.”

“I'll think of something. Preoccupation with the wedding…Mind on a new book…”

Firetti nodded but looked unconvinced. Cops didn't buy easily into even the most reasonable alibis.

“I have Sage on antibiotics,” he said. “He doesn't mind taking pills if you put a dab of butter on them; he's a good patient.” He glanced toward the closed door. “Of course the staff doesn't know. They say he's an amazing patient, that he does just what they want.” He winked at Sage, and doctor and patient exchanged a long and trusting look. Then Firetti laid out the medicines they were to take home, and went over the times and doses.

“I want to see him every day for a while. I'll stop by the house, Wilma, if that's all right—Sage can tell me how he feels, and I'll change the bandages.” That was more than all right with Wilma. They set a time for his visits, and within half an hour the three were headed for Wilma's house, Sage's carrier strapped into Wilma's car, Charlie following in her red Blazer.

 

W
ILMA HAD SET
up a bed for Sage near her desk in the living room where she and Dulcie liked to sit by the fire at night;
she had covered the blue velvet chair with a puffy comforter, and had taped several sturdy boxes together to form a wide, shallow set of steps from the rug to the chair. Behind an end table was a sandbox, and on the floor beside Sage's chair was a plastic tray big enough to hold his water and kibble bowls. They entered the house through the back door, into Wilma's bright blue-and-white kitchen. A welcoming committee awaited them—Joe and Dulcie and Kit looked up from a plastic bowl where they had been enjoying leftovers from last night's dinner, and the three followed Wilma through to the living room where she set down the carrier.

As she and Charlie settled Sage in his new bed, Kit leaped up and curled carefully beside him on the soft comforter, staying away from his cast. Wilma headed for the kitchen, and soon the house smelled of fresh coffee, warm milk, and warming cinnamon buns, soon Charlie carried a tray through to the living room, setting it on the coffee table. “You're taking the week off?” she asked her aunt as Wilma poured the coffee.

Wilma nodded. “I plan to do my taxes—last minute, as usual, with Sage to keep me company. We'll have a cozy fire in the hearth, and I have the CD set up with Dulcie's favorite music, which maybe Sage will like.”

“And my bandages off soon?” Sage asked shyly.

“As soon as the doctor allows,” Wilma told him. “Meanwhile, all the steak and custard you can eat.” She pushed back her long silver hair where it had escaped its ponytail. “You're our guest, Sage. You mustn't be shy about asking for what you want.”

“Or shy about getting spoiled,” Dulcie said. “A few days with Wilma and you won't want to go back to the clowder.”

Sage looked uncertainly at Dulcie. The young cat was still trying to get used to the idea of feline/human conversations, was still trying to decide just how one behaved among humans.

And he was still trying to get used to being shut within solid walls. Confined in a man-made structure, it seemed to Sage that a part of him must have gone missing. The open hills, the wind, the shadowed woods had all been taken from him, had left him feeling incomplete and small.

Kit, lying close to him, watched him intently, her round yellow eyes just inches from his, gazing at him as if trying to see into his very soul, as if trying to know the young tom's deepest thoughts. That unnerved Sage, but excited him.

“You'll stay here with me,” Wilma told Sage, “until I go back to work, then you'll go to Charlie's house, at the ranch, and that's nearer your own hills and woods.” She looked at Charlie. “First day I get back, I start training the new reference librarian.”

Charlie looked so alarmed that the cats came alert, watching her. “You're not planning to quit? The new librarian isn't taking your job?”

Dulcie looked at her housemate in amazement. She'd heard nothing of this. If Wilma quit her job as a reference librarian, she'd have to give up her library office where the cat door opened from among the bushes outside, the door that let Dulcie into the closed library at night.

No more midnight prowling among the books? No more pulling books from the shelves, dragging them up onto a table where she could read alone and unseen? No more nighttime adventures into exotic lands and distant times?

“I'm not quitting,” Wilma said quickly. “Only cutting
back. And we do need more help. The new librarian will be full-time, and that will give us more actual hours, even with the reduced schedule I've set for myself.” Wilma didn't have to work, she had an adequate federal retirement pension from her first career as a probation officer.

Still, Charlie looked uneasy. “You're not…You're feeling all right?”

“I'm feeling fine. Don't fuss,” Wilma scolded. “I'm not sick, there's nothing wrong with me, there are simply some other things I'd like to do. How could I quit? How could I give up my library key?” Wilma said, mirroring Dulcie's thoughts. “How could I give up my office, and Dulcie's cat door? Who knows, I might even start riding again.”

“Are you serious? You can ride Redwing all you want, she really needs the exercise. If…”

Charlie paused, watching Joe. On the desk, the tomcat sat at rigid attention, studying Wilma and then turning his gaze on Charlie, watching the two of them so fixedly that Charlie shivered. Joe's yellow eyes were far too intent and calculating. Whatever he had in mind, he made Charlie feel like a cornered mouse.

“This is perfect,” Joe said softly, turning to watch Wilma. “Are you serious about riding again?”

Wilma looked at him warily.

“This couldn't be better,” Joe purred. “This fits right in with our plans.”

“What plans?” Charlie and Wilma said together.

A slow smile spread over the tomcat's face, sending both women into a paroxysm of suspicion. “What?” Wilma said. “What's in that sneaky cat mind, that you think you can get me to do?”