Cat Raise the Dead (5 page)

This was not a happy morning. Joe's stomach twitched, his whole body ached with sorrow. As he watched through the front window, Clyde backed the Packard out of the drive and headed away toward the vet's. Poor old Barney lay on the front seat wrapped in a blanket, too sick even to sit up and look out the window, though the old golden retriever loved the wind in his face, loved to see the village sweeping by. When Clyde had carried him out to the car he'd looked as limp as a half-full bag of sawdust.

Early last night Barney had seemed fine, frolicking around the backyard in spite of his arthritis. But this morning when Joe slipped into the kitchen just at daylight, Barney lay on the linoleum panting, his eyes dull with a deep hurt somewhere inside, and his muzzle against Joe's nose hot and dry. Joe hadn't realized how deeply he loved Barney until he'd found the old golden retriever stretched out groaning with the pain in his middle.

He had bolted back into the bedroom and waked Clyde, and Joe himself had called Dr. Firreti—said he was a houseguest—while Clyde pulled on a crumpled sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Dr. Firreti said to meet him at the clinic in ten minutes.

Last night Joe'd gotten home about 3:00
A.M
., parting from Dulcie on Ocean Avenue so full of rabbit, and so tired from a hard battle with a wicked-tempered raccoon,
that he hadn't even checked out the kitchen for a late-night snack. He'd gone directly to the bedroom and collapsed on the pillow next to Clyde, hadn't even bothered to wash the coon blood from his whiskers, had hardly hit the pillow, and he was asleep.

He woke two hours later, puzzled by the faint sound of groaning. The bedroom clock said barely 5:00
A.M
., and, trotting out to the kitchen, he'd found Barney hugging the linoleum with pain. Now at five-fifteen Barney was on his way to the vet, to a cold metal table, anesthetics, a cage, and Joe didn't like to imagine what else.

He lay down on the back of his private easy chair and looked out at the empty street. The smell of exhaust fumes still clung, seeping in through the glass. From the kitchen, he could hear Rube pacing and whining, already missing Barney. The black Lab hadn't been parted from the golden since they were pups. Joe listened to him moaning and fussing, then, unable to stand the old Lab's distress, he leaped down.

Pushing open the kitchen door, he invited the big Lab through the living room and up onto his private chair, onto his beautifully frayed, cat hair-covered personal domain. He never shared this chair, not with any cat or dog, never with a human—no one was allowed near it—but now he encouraged old Rube to climb rheumatically up.

The old dog stretched out across the soft, frayed seat, laid his head on the arm of the chair, and sighed deeply. Joe settled down beside him.

This chair had been his own since Clyde first found him, wounded and sick, in that San Francisco gutter. Taking him home to his apartment after a difficult few days at the vet's, Clyde had made a nice bed in a box for him, but he had preferred the blue easy chair, Clyde's only comfortable chair. Clyde hadn't argued. Joe was still a pitifully sick little cat; he had almost died in that gutter. Joe had known, from the time he was weaned, to play human sympathy for all he could get.

From the moment he first curled up in the bright new chair, that article of furniture was his. Now the chair wasn't blue any longer, it had faded to a noncolor and was nicely coated with his own gray fur deposited over the years. He had also shredded the arms and the back in daily clawing sessions, ripping the covering right down to the soft white stuffing. This texturing, overlaid with his own rich gray cat hair, had created a true work of art.

The old dog, reclining, sniffed the fabric deeply, drooled on the overstuffed arm, and sighed with loneliness and self-pity.

“Come on, Rube. Show a little spine. Dr. Firreti's a good vet.”

Rube rolled his eyes at Joe and subsided into misery.

Joe crawled over onto the big dog's shoulder and licked his head. But, lying across Rube, Joe felt lost himself. He was deeply worried for Barney. Barney's illness left him feeling empty, strangely vulnerable and depressed.

He stayed with Rube until long after the old black Lab fell asleep. He had managed to comfort Rube, but he needed comforting himself. Needed a little coddling. He studied the familiar room, his shredded chair, the shabby rug, the battered television, the pale, unadorned walls. This morning, his and Clyde's casually shabby bachelor pad no longer appeared comforting but seemed, instead, lonely and neglected.

Joe rose. He needed something.

He needed some kind of nurturing that home no longer offered.

Frightened at his own malaise, he gave Rube a last lick and bolted out through his cat door. Trotting up the street, then running flat out, he flew across the village, across Ocean, past the closed shops, past the little restaurants that smelled of pancakes and bacon and coffee, fled past the closed galleries and the locked post office.

From a block away he saw that Wilma's kitchen light was on, reflected against the oak tree in her front yard. He could smell fresh-baked gingerbread, too, and he raced toward that welcoming house like some little kid running home from schoolyard bullies.

Galloping across Wilma's front yard and up the steps, he shot straight for the bright glow of Dulcie's plastic cat door and through it, into Wilma's friendly kitchen. The aroma of gingerbread curled his claws and whiskers.

Dulcie stood on the breakfast table looking down at him, startled by his charging entry. She watched him with amazement, her green eyes wide and amused, her muzzle damp from milk and flecked with gingerbread crumbs. “You look terrible—your ears are drooping, even your whiskers are limp. What's wrong? What's happened?”

“It's Barney. Clyde took him to the vet.”

“But—not a car accident? He's never in the street.”

“He's sick, something in his middle, hurting bad.”

“But Dr. Firreti will…”

“He's old, Dulcie. I don't know how much Dr. Firetti can do.” He leaped to the table and pressed against her for comfort. She licked his ear and and laid a soft paw on his paw. Around them, Wilma's blue-and-white kitchen shone with warmth and cleanliness.

Above the tile counter, the rising morning light through the clean windows lent a pearly glow across the blue-and-white wallpaper and the blue cookie jar and cracker jars. Behind the clean glass of the diamond-paned cupboard doors, Wilma's blue pottery sparkled. Wilma's homey touches always eased him, eased him this morning right down to his rough cat soul. He sighed and licked Dulcie's ear.

She nosed the gingerbread toward him and bent her head again, nibbling gingerbread and lapping milk from her Chinese hand-painted bowl. Hungrily, he pushed in beside her. Whoever said cats don't like freshly baked
treats didn't know much about cats. Not until every crumb had vanished, and every drop of milk, did they speak again. His whiskers and his teeth were sodden with gingerbread crumbs and milk, and he felt infinitely better.

He knew there was nothing he could do for Barney but wait and hope. He wasn't used to praying, but he did wonder if a cat prayer would be accepted by whatever powers—if indeed there were any powers existing beyond the pale.

He looked at Dulcie, sitting so regally in the center of the table delicately washing her face. “I thought you took your meals on the rug. When did Wilma start sharing the table?”

She glanced at her bowl, and grinned. “When I told her you ate on the table. She's not about to let Clyde spoil you more than she spoils me.”

“The house looks nice,” he said, leaping down. He didn't usually notice domestic details, unless Dulcie called them to his attention, but Wilma had recently redecorated. Her niece Charlie had helped her paint the walls white and replace the lacy curtains with white shutters. Wilma had sold the thick rag rugs, too, and bought deep-toned Khirmans and Sarouks that were luxurious to roll on. A dozen of Charlie's animal drawings, framed in gold leaf, graced the front rooms, several of Dulcie and even one of himself, of which he was more proud than he let on. The couch had been re-covered in a deep blue velvet as silken as Dulcie's rich fur, and Dulcie's blue afghan lay across the arm just where she liked it; the three upholstered chairs had been re-covered in a red-and-green tweed. And over the fireplace hung a large oil landscape of the Molena Point hills and rooftops, all vibrant reds and greens, done by Janet Jeannot some years before she was murdered.

He trotted into the living room, following Dulcie, and leaped to Wilma's desk, where the early light flooded in through the white shutters.

Beneath their paws lay a map of Molena Point, unfolded and spread out flat.

“Wilma left this for us?”

Dulcie smiled. Beside the map lay a stack of newspaper clippings about the cat burglar, machine copies of papers Dulcie had read in the library.

Joe scratched his ear. “If Clyde knew Wilma was leaving out maps and news clippings for us—aiding and abetting—he'd have a royal fit.” Clyde did not take easily to Joe's playing detective. For a hard-nosed macho type, Joe's housemate worried too much.

“A few measly clippings and a map,” she said. “That's hardly aiding and abetting. And Wilma's never helped us before—-not that I wanted her to. She didn't have a clue that we were into the Beckwhite murder.”

“Maybe she didn't, but she knew about Janet. She told you afterward she was worried.”

“But she stayed out of it—she's sensible, for a human.” Dulcie stretched, and curled up on the blotter. “You have to admit, Wilma tolerates our interests better than Clyde does.”

“She couldn't spend her whole career working criminal cases without getting some sense of perspective.”

Some of the clippings were about the local burglaries, but most of them chronicled the cat woman's thieving progress as she moved up the coast from San Diego, working ever farther north as the summer progressed.

“As if the old gal prefers cooler weather,” Joe said. “Southern California in the winter, San Francisco for the summer.”

Studying reports of the local burglaries, they inscribed a claw mark on the map at each location but found no pattern. The woman seemed to travel back and forth at random, across the wealthier neighborhoods, perhaps picking out whatever house she passed where people were working outside.

“I like this one,” he said, pawing at the newspaper
clippings. “Shell Beach. She goes right on in while the guy's sleeping.

“Guess she thought, if he'd been to a bachelor party, he'd be so drunk nothing would wake him.”

The cat burglar, slipping upstairs into the prospective groom's bedroom on the morning of the appointed wedding, had lifted the matched gold wedding rings, laid out for the ceremony, from the dresser.

She took the rings out of the box, left the closed box on the dresser with two coins stuck into the slots, presumably to give the box some weight. The groom, probably hung over and in a hurry, or dazed with the thought of his coming nuptials, didn't have a clue until he opened the box at the church, to give the ring to the best man, and found instead, two nickels.

Dulcie smiled. “The woman's brazen.”

“And she's afraid of cats. When she sees me watching, I scare the hell out of her.” He rubbed his whiskers against the shutters, staring out through the glass.

The morning was turning golden, the windows across the street reflecting tiny suns mirrored all in a row. He narrowed his eyes against the glare. “We need a lookout; I've about worn out my pads following false leads, when the cat burglar never did show. The roof of Clyde's shop isn't high enough. I can't see half the hills.”

His plan, so far, had been to watch from the roof of the automotive shop as the cat burglar drove around choosing her mark, then nip on over to where she'd parked. Trouble was, she ditched her car blocks away, and sometimes she didn't return to it. And that one time, when he thought she was inside a laundry room, she'd slipped away, or maybe had just outstubborned him. He'd waited what seemed hours, until he was faint from hunger, had left at last in a huff, not sure if she'd given him the slip or was still in there, and so hungry he didn't care. Then the next day, sitting on the breakfast table, he'd read the
Gazette
article with a list of what
she'd stolen, including a miniature cat painting worth a cool two hundred thousand. He'd really muffed that one—he'd felt stupid as dog doo.

“That brown shingle house,” Dulcie said, “that tall one up on Haley with the cupola on top. Except for the courthouse tower, it's the highest point in the village.”

“Right on.”

“And today's Saturday, half the village will be digging up their yards.”

They leaped from the desk and out through Dulcie's cat door, and as they headed up Dolores toward Sixth, she couldn't help purring. She loved this sneaky stuff. Spying was a hundred times more fun even than stalking rabbits.

But as they crossed Danner, the wind quickened, swirling along the sidewalk and ruffling their fur, and above them the clouds came rolling. Joe stared up at the rain-laden sky.

“If that cuts loose, no one will work in their yard. If it rains, that old woman will stay home in her bed.”

“Maybe it will blow on out, dump itself in the sea.”

Crossing Danner, trotting between morning traffic, they angled through a backyard to Haley, could see the brown house rising just ahead, its cupola thrusting up like a child's playhouse atop the wide roof, jutting up into swiftly gathering clouds. There was no tree by which they could reach the roof. As they circled the shingled walls and stared above for a likely windowsill or vine-covered downspout, the wind gusted sharply, pressing them against the bushes with strong thrusts. “Wind gets any stronger,” Joe said, “it'll lift us right off the roof, send us flying like loose shingles.”