Cat Seeing Double (17 page)

“What now?” Dulcie said. “If she's already mailed her bill, what's he going to do with that stuff? Do you think that was Larn Williams? That he called earlier just to see if she was going out this evening?”

Joe didn't answer. Knocking the phone off the cradle, for the second time that night he pawed in the number of Ryan's cell phone.

 

Ryan was enjoying the last of her flan when her cell phone rang. She didn't want to answer, she pushed it across the table to Clyde.

“R. Flannery, construction,” he said between mouthfuls.

“May I speak to R. Flannery? I called earlier, I have an urgent message for her.”

“I can take the message,” Clyde told Joe, trying not shout with rage.

At the other end, Joe sighed. “All right,” he said. “I
think
the guy who followed her is going to break into her truck, within the next few minutes. It's kind of complicated.”

Clyde stared at the phone. “Just a minute.” He handed the phone to Ryan. “You'd better take this.” But he leaned close to listen.

“It's me again,” Joe said. “I believe someone is intent on falsifying your billing for the Jakes addition in San Andreas. Have you mailed that bill?”

“I…who is this? How do you…? What are you talking about?”

“Have you mailed the bill or is it still in your truck?”

“No. Yes. It's in my truck. What…?”

“The person who followed you earlier returned to your apartment and broke in. With lock picks. While you've been having dinner he changed the billing on your computer and made copies of the original bills and doctored them. He ran a new printout, made copies of the doctored bills, and left. I'd guess he's headed your way.”

“
Who is this? How could you know such a thing?”

“He prepared the new statement for considerably more than your original cost-plus numbers. If you've mailed the bill, probably no harm done—unless he is able to intercept it at the other end. If you haven't mailed it, I think he'll try to break into your truck, open the envelope, and switch billings. In other words, he wants to set you up, add embezzlement to the possible charge of murder.”

“Why would he bother? Isn't murder enough?”

“Maybe he thinks embezzlement would in some way strengthen the murder charges.”

“What does this guy look like, who's supposed to be doing all this?”

Listening to the caller's description of the burglar, she felt all warmth drain from her hands and body.

“Don't let him get that envelope,” the caller said. “There isn't much time.” And he hung up.

 

Hitting the disconnect, Joe dropped to the floor and headed for the bathroom window. Ahead of him Dulcie, balanced on the windowsill, said, “I'm going home first, see if the kit's there. She…”

“There's not time,” he said, leaping past her. “We'll miss the action.”

“Can't help it. Go watch Ryan's truck. I'll be along when I know the kit's safe.”

“But…”

Dropping from the window she fled around the building and raced down the sidewalk heading for home, filled with worry.

The rusty
wire netting of the chicken houses was half falling down like those the kit had seen long ago in her travels when she was small. She longed to push inside and have a look but the smell stopped her, burning and stinging her nose. The stink came strongest where the dirt floor of the pens was covered with sheets of rotting plywood. In the darkening evening she could see that one of those had been shifted aside. A black emptiness loomed beneath, a hole big enough for a man to slip through. Why would a man want to go down there? Padding around the side of the pen, she could see down into the pit where heavy timbers stood against the earthen walls. Rough steps led down.

Backing away sneezing and coughing, she knew she had found something important. What was the old man up to? She wanted to look closer, but she daren't creep down into his stinking cellar, that smell was like something that would reach up and grab her. Tales filled her of human people dying, of skin and eyes burned, of lungs rotted, and even their brains turned to dust, and she hurried away, afraid clear down to her paws.

But she could follow the old man, if she kept her distance. She could see what that was about, dumping his bags of garbage down there among the ruins.

Hurrying away from the ugly, deserted cabin, she raced down the narrow road and down the scrubby, empty hills as fast and silent as a hawk's shadow. But she ran scared. Traveling the darkening, empty land so far from home, alone, was not like when she slipped through the night shoulder to shoulder with Joe Grey and Dulcie feeling bold and safe. Watching the falling blackness around her for prowling raccoons and coyotes or bobcats, she ran pell-mell for the Pamillon estate.

 

Dulcie hurried through the village beneath pools of light from the shop windows heading home, praying the kit was there, an uneasy feeling in her stomach, a frightened tremor that drew her racing along the sidewalks brushing past pedestrians' hard shoes and dodging leashed dogs, running, running until at last she was flying through Wilma's flowers and in under the plastic flap of her cat door. Mewing, she prowled the house looking for the kit, mewing and peering behind living-room furniture and under the beds, unwilling to speak until she was sure Wilma didn't have company.

Determining at last that the house was empty of humans and of the kit as well, she called out anyway, her voice echoing hollowly. “Kit, come out. Kit, are you there? Please come out, it's important.” All this in a voice that was hardly a whisper though her calls would reach feline ears.

There was no answer, not a purr, no soft brush of fur against carpet or hardwood as she would hear if the kit sneaked up on her, playing games.

At last, leaving the house again, she scented back and forth across the garden, and searched driveway and sidewalk for a fresh track. She raced up a trellis and sniffed all across the roof too and up the hill in back through the tall dry grass where hated foxtails leaped into her fur. Finding no fresh scent of the kit she grew increasingly worried. Kit hadn't been home at all.

Well, she couldn't search the whole world, one couldn't search
all
the hills though she and Joe had tried to do just that when the kit disappeared for three days last winter.

But the kit had been smaller then, and more vulnerable. She was a grown-up cat now. And, as Kit was far more than an ordinary cat, Dulcie thought stubbornly, she would have to take responsibility for herself.

Hurting and cross but giving up at last, Dulcie headed for Lupe's Playa.
I must not worry, I hate when Wilma worries about me. The kit is big now and can take care of herself.
But Dulcie was so unsettled that when she saw Joe on the low branch of a cypress tree outside Lupe's Playa she scorched up the trunk ploughing straight into him, shivering.

He hardly noticed her; his entire attention was on Ryan's red pickup parked just across the street.

The passenger door stood open. A man sat inside, poised with one foot on the curb and watching the restaurant through the window, as if ready to slip away at any sign of Ryan.

Joe Grey glanced at her, and smiled. “He opened the envelope. Removed Ryan's billing.” They watched him fill Ryan's large brown envelope with the sheaf of papers from his pocket. “He opened the door with a long, thin rod. Only took a second. Opened the bottom of the envelope, peeled it back as slick as skinning a mouse. He doesn't see Ryan and Clyde watching.” He looked toward the patio wall where the bricks were spaced in an open and decorative pattern offering passersby a teasing view of the garden and diners. In the restaurant's soft backlight Dulcie could just see Ryan and Clyde with their heads together, peering out through the wall's concealing vine. Talk about cats spying.

“I wonder if Ryan called Detective Garza,” Dulcie said, glancing along the street as if Garza or Detective Davis might have hurried over from the station to stand among the shadows.

“I don't think so. She means to lead the guy on—that's Larn Williams, all right.” Joe flicked an ear. “I was on the wall when he approached the truck. She told Clyde she can make a second switch, print a new, correct bill and mail it. Let Williams think he was successful, let him wait for the Jakeses to hit the roof because the bill's so high, wait for them to maybe file a lawsuit. She thinks he might tell the Jakeses that she cooked the books, even before the bill arrives, make up some story about how he found out.”

“Would they believe him?”

“Are Larn Williams and the Jakeses close friends? We don't know a thing about them.” Again Joe smiled. “One more phone call. Who knows how much Harper
can pick up about Williams, while he's in San Andreas?”

“You're going to ask
Harper
to gather information for
you
?”

“Turnabout,” the tomcat said softly, looking smug.

Dulcie stared at him for a long time. She did not reply.

Williams sealed the envelope and laid it on the seat. “Same position as he found it,” Joe said. Quietly Williams depressed the lock, shut the truck door and slipped away up the street, disappearing around the corner. The cats heard a car start. He was gone when Ryan and Clyde emerged.

Ryan drove slowly away as if she had no idea the truck had been broken into. Clyde, parked in the next block, followed her.

“What will they do now?” Dulcie said.

“She'll swing by our place, I guess. She left Rock there. I'm betting that when they finish going over tomorrow's work Clyde will follow her home. Check out her apartment. Maybe try to talk her into staying at her uncle's for a few nights.”

“She won't, she's too independent. And if Larn Williams wanted to kill her, why would he bother setting her up for a lawsuit?” Dulcie backed quickly down the tree and headed up the street toward home. “Maybe the kit's back, maybe she's raiding the refrigerator right now.”

And Joe, his stomach rumbling with hunger, galloped along beside her. Within minutes they were flying through Wilma's garden among a jungle of chrysanthemums and late-blooming geraniums, the flowers' scents
collecting on their coats as they approached the gray stone cottage.

Padding up the back steps and in through Dulcie's cat door, entering Wilma's immaculate blue-and-white kitchen, Joe headed directly for the refrigerator but Dulcie never paused, off she went, galloping through the house again searching for the kit.

The first time Dulcie ever brought Joe here, she had taught him to open the heavy, sealed door of the refrigerator, to leap to the counter, brace his hind paws in the handle and shove. Now, forcing it open, he dropped to the floor catching the door as it swung out. The bottom shelf was Dulcie's, and Wilma always left something appealing; she didn't forget half the time the way Clyde did. Joe might find on his own refrigerator shelf a fancy gourmet selection from Jolly's Deli, left over from the last poker game, or the dried up end of a fossilized hot dog.

Dulcie's private stock tonight included two custards from Jolly's, sliced roast chicken, a bowl of apricots in cream, and crisply simmered string beans with bits of bacon, all the offerings stored in Styrofoam cups that were light enough for a cat to lift, and with easily removable lids that were gentle on feline teeth. He had them out and was opening them when Dulcie returned.

“Kit's not home. And Wilma's still gone. I think she said there was some kind of lecture tonight on the changing tax picture.”

“Sounds deadly. Why does she go to those things?”

“To reduce her taxes, so she can buy gourmet food for us.” She nosed at the array of delicacies that he had
arranged on the blue linoleum. “I wish the kit would come home.”

But the kit did not appear. Joe and Dulcie feasted, then Joe retired to Wilma's desk to call Harper. He punched in the number but there was no answer. He tried again half an hour later, and again.

“The phone's turned off,” Dulcie said. “Leave a message.”

Joe didn't like to use the phone's message center, but he did at last, then curled up on the blue velvet couch beside Dulcie and fell quickly asleep. Curled next to him, Dulcie lay worrying. The kit's propensity for trouble seemed so much worse at night, when Dulcie imagined all kinds of calamities. She dozed restlessly, jerking awake when Wilma came in, and again at 6:00 in the morning when she heard her cat door flapping.

She leaped up, fully alert as the kit galloped into the living room, her tail high, her yellow eyes gleaming. Above them, the windows were growing pale. Hopping to the couch, Kit nosed excitedly at Dulcie. “I found the old man. I found where he lives. I smelled chemicals so maybe it's where he made the bomb. I found where he dumps his trash. Why does bomb-making leave all that trash?”

“Trash?” Joe said, sitting up yawning. “What kind of trash?”

“Boxes and cans that smell terrible of chemicals.”

He rose to stand over her. “Where, Kit? How much trash? Where did you find it?”

The kit looked longingly back toward the kitchen
where she had raced past the empty plastic dishes. “Is there anything left to eat?”

“We left a custard in the refrigerator,” Dulcie said, “and some chicken.”

The kit took off for the kitchen. Following her, they watched her jump up to force open the heavy door. The minute it flew back she raked out the cartons, fighting open the loosely applied lids, and got down to the serious business of breakfast. She ate ravenously, gobbling more like a starving hound than a cat, making little slurping noises. She didn't speak or look up until the custard and the chicken had disappeared and the containers were licked clean.

“All right,” Joe said when the kit sat contentedly licking her paws. “Let's have it.”

“I need to use the phone,” the kit said softly. “Right now. I need to call Detective Garza.”

Joe and Dulcie stared at her. “Come in the living room,” Joe said. “Come
now
, Kit.”

Cutting her eyes at Dulcie, the kit headed obediently for the living room and up onto the blue velvet couch.

“Start again,” Joe said, pacing across the coffee table. “From the beginning.”

“I found where the old man lives. Up the hills above the Pamillon estate in a shack on the side of a cliff above that big gully and a chicken house hanging—”

“Kit.
How
did you find him?”

“I hid in his car. A black Jaguar with the top down. He drove so twisty it made me carsick again. An old shack and the chicken houses hanging on the edge of the cliff and I could smell chemicals and there weren't any chickens, maybe the chemicals killed them all. He
filled his car with stinking garbage bags and went away and then I saw his car far down in the old ruins and—”

“Kit,” Joe said, “slow down. This is all running together. What are you leaving out?”

The kit stared at him.

“For starters, where did you find his car?”

“At the police station. After he talked to that boy. He drove like fury. I didn't know why he had such a nice car or why he would load it down with garbage. I—”

Dulcie licked Kit's ear. “Go slower. Tell us slower.”

The kit started over from where she had slipped into the old man's black Jaguar. She described the shack and how she had gone inside. How he had loaded up his trash and driven down into the Pamillon estate. “I went there. I ran and ran.”

The hills had loomed below her black and silent, and her head was filled with unfriendly beasts hunting for their supper. She ran listening for every sound, watching for any movement among rock and bushy shadow. Ran flying down the hills as night fell, trying to make no noise herself in the dry grass, ran terrified until the half-fallen mansion loomed against the darkening sky, and ancient dead trees rose up with reaching arms.

Slipping into the ruins among the old oaks she had padded among fallen walls into the empty mansion with its rooms open to the stars. She could smell where the old man had walked, his scent thick, his old-man stink mixed with the nose-burning chemical odors. His trail led through the half-fallen parlor and through the kitchen and down into the cellars, his sour trail clinging along the walls.

The cellars were too black even for a cat to see. She
had to travel by her whiskers alone, by the little electric messages telegraphed from muzzle and paws. Warily jumping at every imagined movement, she drew deep beneath the mansion. A thinnest light came at last seeping in from a great crack in the cellar wall. And smells exploded suddenly, as loud as a radio blaring on. She could barely make out, ahead in the blackness, a looming form like a huge misshapen beast. It was silent and still, and it stunk: the garbage bags, black and lumpy. Imagining the old man standing there too, she spun and ran again back and up through the tunnels until at last she could see starlight once more, above the open rooms.

Hiding behind fallen stones panting and staring out at the night sky, she had crept up the broken stairs to the nursery and into the old chest beside the fireplace where once her friend Dillon Thurwell had hidden. There, hungry and frightened and very tired, she had curled up in a tight ball trying to comfort herself, and soon she slept.