Cat Striking Back (9 page)

Though most of the gossip on this street was about Ed Becker, who was the handsomest man among the four couples, strikingly tall and lean with well-styled black hair and laughing brown eyes. It was hard not to like Ed, he was so boyishly charming and made such an effort to get you to like him. Max said he was a charming sociopath, and usually Max was right. But this time? She wondered idly if the stories about Ed were true. And if they were, did Frances suspect his deceptions? Or was she as innocent as she appeared?

What a waste, if Ed was a womanizer, when he had such an appealing wife. And if Frances knew about his affairs, why did she stay with him? She was just as attractive as Ed, though far quieter, seeming almost shy. They made a striking couple, Francis nearly as tall as Ed, slim and tanned, with long, dark hair and brown eyes. She was an accountant, so they took their vacation when she'd finished tax season and filed her extensions. Strange, Charlie thought, that if Ed had been intimate with any of the other
three women, the four couples were still friends, having dinner together, going on outings that they all seemed to enjoy with one another.

Charlie's crews had been scheduled to come in today to clean the Chapmans' refrigerator, to empty the dishwasher, change the linens, do the laundry and the regular cleaning and attend to the list of small repairs that Theresa had given them. Mavity had started working in the other three houses a day or two ago, once the other couples had left. And that, too, was strange.

Little wizened Mavity Flowers, who had worked for Charlie since she began the service, had told her that in all three houses, a number of small items seemed to be missing, an extra camera, a laptop, a tape recorder. Things they thought the householders had probably taken with them. Mavity hadn't found any indication of a break-in, and everything else was in order: Frances Becker's lovely antiques all in place, the Longleys' first editions and paperweight collection on their shelves behind locked doors, and Rita Waterman's jewelry cabinet securely locked.

Giving Mango a last ear rub, Charlie left the laundry room, closing the kitchen door behind her. Letting herself out the front door, she hurried up the street. The neighborhood was quiet. A couple of Sunday papers still lay in the front yards. She could smell bacon frying, as if for a late Sunday breakfast. The pine and cypress trees among the houses on the downhill side cast short, sharp shadows among the scattered rhododendron bushes. The sun was warm on her back, the rain vanished.

The moment she let herself into the Waterman house,
the three Waterman cats came in from outside through their cat door, to rub against her ankles as if feeling ignored or neglected.

“You already lonely?” She knelt and spent some time petting and talking to them, then she went through the house. Entering Rita's closet, knowing where Rita kept her jewelry cabinet key, she pulled on the cotton gloves to retrieve it, wanting to make sure that, though it was locked, the pieces were safe inside.

The key wasn't where it should be. She fished around until she found it where Rita had apparently moved it, and she opened the wall case.

All was in place, the ornate pendants and chokers with their faux jewels as rich and brilliant as any collection of multimillion-dollar pieces. It was interesting to Charlie that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, paste gems were often used in the most intricate gold and silver settings. That once the technique for making faux gems was developed, a whole new market was created for beautiful but affordable jewelry. Now, the settings themselves were collectors' items though they were of more modest value than if they had contained real gems. These were the pieces that Rita collected, and among them were some that Charlie had specially admired, particularly one coral hair clip and an emerald pendant. She was tempted to try them on, but she didn't take that liberty. If she wanted to spend royalty money on such a piece, fine, but she wasn't messing with Rita's treasures. Locking the cabinet, she replaced the key where she'd found it.

She found nothing amiss in the other rooms, or in the other two houses. The Longley book cabinets were locked,
and at the Beckers', Frances's antique furniture was all in place. She was thinking hungrily of lunch as she let herself out of the Becker house and locked the door. She was heading for her car when Clyde's yellow roadster came up the street and pulled to the curb beside her. The top was down, Clyde and Ryan in the front seat, Joe Grey in the back. She did a double take at all three: Clyde looked angry and distraught, Ryan was trying to hide her amusement, and in the backseat, Joe Grey looked wide eyed and innocent—a sure sign of trouble.

S
TEPPING CLOSER TO
the open roadster, Charlie was afraid to ask what was wrong. Clyde's frown was of the helpless variety, which told her that whatever it was, Joe Grey was the cause. She studied Joe. In the backseat, the tomcat sat with his white paws together, his silver coat catching the sunlight, his yellow eyes as guileless as those of a kitten.

She looked at Ryan, whose eyes, complemented by her green sweatshirt, seemed greener than ever. Ryan shrugged, her expression both amazed and amused as she watched some unspoken conflict between Clyde and the tomcat.

Charlie could understand how she felt, this was all new to Ryan. She hadn't known for very long about Joe's unusual talents. Only shortly before Christmas had she learned that the tomcat could speak to her; that revelation had unfolded on a memorable Christmas morning that
neither Ryan nor Clyde nor Joe Grey would forget. Clyde's subsequent marriage proposal had added to the general giddiness of their Yule celebration, and even now, after four months in the Damen household, Ryan still hadn't settled in completely to this strange new lifestyle that was so often dominated by the smart-mouthed tomcat.

Charlie searched the couple's faces. “What's wrong, what's happened?”

Both were silent.

When she looked again at Joe Grey, the tomcat yawned.

“You haven't been by the Parker house?” Clyde said.

“No, I came up the lower street.”

“Max didn't say anything about it this morning before he left? But maybe he didn't know.” Clyde turned to stare pointedly at Joe. “This time, we have a disappearing body. We have a supposed murder, but there's no corpse.”

They all three looked at Joe. The tomcat said nothing, his yellow eyes wide and innocent.

Ryan said, “Davis worked the scene this morning, she and Dallas are still there, stringing crime tape. We'd wanted to take a look at the house, I'd hoped it might be for sale, it's been empty so long. I thought maybe, depending on what they found, they'd let us take a peek—but you know those two. They weren't letting us in with it cordoned off.”

“Then you
are
looking for a fixer-upper,” Charlie said. She daren't look at Joe, the tomcat shared fully her amusement at Clyde's pitiful carpentry skills. She knew that Ryan was convinced Clyde could convert his magic touch with
cars into an equally impressive skill with houses. Ryan had said they'd make a great team, but Charlie wondered if that was just the dream of a new bride.

“We've looked at five open houses already today,” Ryan said, “and we have a late appointment with Helen Thurwell to show us some others. Right now, we're on our way up to look at the Baldwin Ranch. It's been vacant nearly a year, and it
is
listed. And I want to swing by the remodel, see how the men are coming on the drain.”

“They're working on Sunday?”

Ryan nodded. “It's like a circus on the weekend. The neighbors keep coming around asking what we're doing. Digging a bomb shelter? Putting a swimming pool in the garage? We lock the garage at night to keep kids and animals from getting down in there.”

The four-bedroom house Ryan was renovating was charming, but the client, who had owned it less than a year, had discovered during last winter's rains that the finished downstairs rooms had, in fact, turned into a swimming pool, the house having major water problems left undisclosed in the “as is” sales contract.

Checking the drainage system, Ryan had found heavy leaks under the garage and into the basement, generated by a hidden spring uphill from the house, a flow that she didn't think even the usual French drains could fully handle. She'd decided to put in a bold new drainage system under the garage. As they couldn't get a backhoe under the roof, her men were digging by hand, working on Sunday by special permission of the building department.

Ryan said, “Did you check on the kittens? Who let the mama out?”

“Not a clue,” Charlie said. “Joe and Dulcie…” She paused, watching the tomcat. “What? What is it?”

In the backseat, Joe Grey had reared up, his paws on the open window sill as he stared down the hill into the neighbors' wooded yards. Glancing quickly at Charlie, he shook his head almost imperceptibly, his voice silenced, the look in his yellow eyes wary. They all looked where Joe was looking but saw nothing unusual.

Dropping down onto the seat again, the tomcat spoke softly. “Someone was standing halfway down the hill under that big cypress tree, looking up at us. He's gone now but I'll just have a look…” Before Clyde could reach over and grab him he'd leaped out, was across the yard and up the nearest pine. Scrambling toward the top, he appeared and disappeared among the dark branches, then vanished into the highest, thickest foliage.

 

J
OE PEERED DOWN
from the top of the tree, clinging to a frail and precarious branch, his paws sticky with pine sap, the prickly limbs tickling his ears. Scanning the yards below, he could see no one now standing among the bushes, and not the faintest movement of shadows. Off beyond the village, a stretch of sea danced with reflections of light like tiny signal fires.

The lower street was empty, too, and when he looked back along their own street, scanning the two blocks to the Parker house, he could see no car there; Detectives Davis and Garza must have left. He felt gratified that Davis had put enough credence in his anonymous call to
not only work the scene herself but to bring Dallas Garza back for an even more thorough look. Along the sidewalk and around the ragged bushes ran a line of bright yellow crime scene tape. It circled the house and pool in an enticing invitation to nosy neighbors and small children. Just below him, all three were scanning the lower yards. Ryan had taken a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment. Joe thought she'd search with those, but instead she looked straight up the pine tree, fixing her sights on him.

 

T
O
R
YAN, EVEN
with the binoculars the gray tomcat was just a shadow among the concealing branches. Only the white smears of his belly and nose and paws were clear, where he hung over a branch peering down to the lower street. When she turned the glasses downward to look where he was looking, she still could see no one. She glanced at Charlie, but Charlie shrugged and shook her head. Beside her, Clyde started the car. She reached over, turned off the engine. “You weren't going to wait for him?”

Clyde sighed, and settled down to wait for the tomcat, watching the wooded yards below. Nothing stirred below, no movement but the shiver of breeze through the trees and bushes. No car was visible on either street. High above them the tomcat shifted position. What had he seen?
Had
there been someone watching, or only a passing neighbor?

“He saw something he didn't like,” Charlie said. “I've never known him to be wrong.”

“You don't live with him twenty-four seven,” Clyde told her.

“He isn't stuck up there?” Ryan said. “You sure he can get down?”

Clyde laughed. “Wouldn't that be a trip, if Joe panicked, forgot how to back down a tree and started yowling like a scared kitten. If we don't get a move on, we'll miss our appointment. Helen Thurwell doesn't—”

“Wait,” Ryan said. “Listen.”

A car had started on the lower street, a quiet engine. In a moment they saw a flash of white go by. Clyde reached to turn the key, but Ryan was quicker. “You won't get far, tailing a guy in a bright yellow car!” She was out of the car before he could stop her, running downhill, racing away, cutting through the woods as the white car was slowed by the sharp curves. As Charlie ran for her Blazer, Clyde started the roadster's smooth-purring engine and moved uphill to the next cross street where he could turn back onto the lower road. Charlie watched him, then peered up at Joe Grey, some forty feet above. She didn't intend to leave him. It was Joe who'd spotted the eavesdropper; it was Joe who'd uncovered what could be a murder scene. It would be cruel to leave him behind—to say nothing of the tongue-lashing they'd receive later. “Come on,” she hissed, digging her keys from her pocket. “Hurry up!”

A
SLAB OF BARK
flipped off the tree as Joe backed down. He nearly lost his grip and went slithering down as clumsy as a drunken squirrel. He hit the ground running, leaped into Charlie's SUV through the open driver's door, jumped across her, and landed on the seat. He looked up at her smugly, as if he'd planned that acrobatic descent. She hid a grin, gunned the engine, and took off.

From the top of the tree he had watched Ryan running down the lower road, chasing the white car, had glimpsed flashes of white among the foliage as it slipped away to disappear beyond the pines. Ryan was making good time. Straining to see, he'd glimpsed the car turning left at Ocean, up toward Highway 1. By then, he could no longer see Ryan but he could hear the faint echo of her racing footsteps. A startled crow screamed, a harsh and affronted cry as she passed beneath him. Behind her, Clyde's yellow roadster flashed into view, racing to catch up with her and stay on the guy's tail.

Now, Charlie made the same U-turn, heading down the hill. “Did you see him turn? Did you see which way?”

“Left, toward the freeway,” Joe said. “I hope it was the same white car.” He looked over at her, frowning. “What good is this? A red SUV and a bright yellow roadster. About as subtle a tail as a dozen black-and-whites with their sirens blasting.” He tried to recall what he'd seen of the man, to bring back the hastily glimpsed details of that dark-clad figure standing in the bushes halfway down the hill. He'd seen him for only an instant before the guy turned suddenly and moved away, to vanish like a shadow among the lower houses. A thin man in a dark green windbreaker and dark jeans. And a hat? Yes, a brown slouch hat pulled low over his face, hiding it from Joe's high vantage point among the branches.

He'd appeared again for an instant, just above the lower street, slipping fast through a side yard. He hadn't seen the man's face, and from that height, he'd caught no scent of him. If that guy was the killer, he wouldn't know him from Adam, he'd recognize only the clothes. So what kind of undercover cat was he?

He thought the car was a four-door. It was fairly new, he had the impression of smooth, expensive curves. He'd gotten only a glimpse before the trees hid it. A few flashes of white and an occasional flash of red taillights as it braked at the curves and then as it turned, and it was gone.

Could the guy have followed Clyde's roadster up the hill from the Parker house? But why? Unless he was the killer and had been down there spying on the two detectives? Who but the killer of the vanished body would have reason to be watching Dallas and Juana?

And how had he been clever enough to spy on a pair of cops and not be seen? If those two had seen him down there, they'd have collared him, questioned him, gotten his name, run his driver's license if he had one. And why would he follow Clyde and Ryan after they'd stopped to talk with the detectives?

Joe recast the conversation at the Parker house, as he'd crouched in the backseat of the roadster trying to look sleepy and clueless. Davis had mentioned the samples she'd sent to the lab to see if they were human blood. The two detectives and Ryan and Clyde had talked about the neighborhood, about who lived on that street. Dallas said there was only one guy he knew of with an arrest sheet, and that was for a white-collar crime, a sleazy embezzlement.

Any of that might be of interest to the killer. But what, exactly, had made him slip up the hill to stand among the bushes where, in the silent neighborhood, he must have heard every word they said. Joe tried to remember if, at the Parker house before Dallas and Juana came over to the car,
he
had spoken. Could the guy have heard
him
talking? The thought made the skin along his back twitch and his fur bristle.

He couldn't remember saying a word. And later, up the hill, when Charlie, Clyde, and Ryan had talked about house hunting, about looking at an empty ranch and about checking Ryan's current remodel to see if the drain had been dug, Joe was sure he hadn't spoken.

Except…Clyde had said,
You haven't been by the Parker house?
And he had turned to stare at Joe.
This time, we have a disappearing body. We have a supposed murder. But there's no
corpse.
And his look at Joe had been so pointed and angry that Charlie had looked into the backseat, too, fixing an intent gaze on one gray tomcat.

Well, hell, Joe thought. To the eavesdropper that would be no more than idle conversation. What could possibly lead him to imagine that they were talking to a cat, or that the cat understood them?

Still, the incident made him nervous, made him wish his human friends would be more careful. His paws on the dashboard, he looked ahead as Charlie caught up with the roadster at the intersection of Ocean where Clyde had stopped for a tangle of slow-moving pedestrians.

As Charlie pulled over behind him, Ryan caught up with the Blazer, and stood talking through the passenger window. “I lost him, way back. I think it was a Lexus. There was mud smeared on the plate.” She glanced up toward the highway. “He turned left into half a dozen cars, four of them white, all heading up the hill. A UPS truck pulled in behind them, blocking my view, but three white cars turned left onto the freeway.”

“You want to try to follow him?” Charlie asked. “With no more of a description than—”

“Green windbreaker,” Joe interrupted. “Dark jeans. Brown slouch hat. I couldn't see his face.”

“We'll take the north route,” Ryan said and headed for the roadster.

Charlie followed them uphill toward the freeway, armed with enough information that, with luck and a prayer, they might be able to spot the guy. They turned left and she turned right, heading south.

 

M
OVING SLOWLY IN
the heavy noon traffic, Charlie and Joe couldn't pass on the two-lane highway, the lane in the other direction being wall-to-wall cars. Couldn't catch up with the three white cars they could glimpse far ahead of them down the steep hill. At the turnoff to the little shopping plaza, two of the cars made the left and one kept moving south. Charlie glanced at Joe.

“Go for the plaza,” Joe said, watching both cars turn into the shopping area. He lifted a paw nervously, willing the truck ahead of the Blazer to turn before the light changed to red again.

They didn't make it, the truck turned as the signal went red. By the time Charlie pulled into the parking lot, both white cars had vanished. She paused, scanning the rows of vehicles.

“Put your windows down,” Joe said as he slipped up onto the dash.

She hit the buttons to lower the windows, and began to drive slowly up and down the rows. Crouched on the dash, Joe examined each white car they passed, sniffing the air for fresh exhaust. There were white cars in every row. He sniffed each and peered inside, studying the few drivers who were getting in or out, or who sat listening to music or talk radio, waiting for some more energetic partner to return loaded with parcels and grocery bags. A white-haired woman dozed in a white Buick. A long-haired blonde in a Ford coupe glanced around at them, and turned out to be a man. Watching for a guy in a green windbreaker, Joe
thought about Ryan and Clyde heading north on the four-lane, wondering if they'd have better luck.

They covered the parking lot at a tedious crawl, then Charlie pulled into an empty slot in front of the drugstore. Cuddling Joe under her arm like a little lapdog, she headed inside to walk the aisles.

They saw no man even close to Joe's description, and their search didn't last long once people noticed him. “Oh, look at the kitty!” “Mama, that woman has a cat!” “You take your cat shopping with you? How cute.” Soon Joe's claws were out, ready to bloody the next reaching hand that tried to stroke him. He could feel Charlie shaking with laughter as they returned to the parking lot.

“Let's walk it once,” Joe said. “Behind the cars.” She did that, and Joe sniffed at each trunk seeking the scent of swimming-pool mud or the stink of a dead body. He smelled dust; dirty clothes, as from someone's laundry on the way to the Laundromat; and bananas and various other food items from recently stashed grocery bags. But no residue of a ripening body.

“Wild-goose chase,” Charlie said as she stepped back into the Blazer and dropped Joe on the seat. As she started the engine, a stout woman in the next car looked in and smiled, as if pleased to see someone talking to her cat. She pulled away, still smiling.

Joe said, “Why would he follow Clyde and Ryan from the Parker house? What was so interesting?”

“Maybe he drove up there to watch me while I checked the empty houses.”

Joe raised his ears. “You think that was your prowler?
The guy who let Mango out? Then he had nothing to do with the murder at the Parker house.”

“The cleaning crew found a few little things missing in the vacationers' houses. Or maybe they were only out of place. Not enough to be a burglary, but enough to make me wonder.”

“Dulcie and Kit and I could have a look. There was a strange smell around the Parker house—besides the body. Almost like catnip, or catmint. If he's been in those houses…”

“Did you smell that in the Chapman house?”

He frowned. “No. But the smell of kittens and cat box, and cat food, can cover a lot of smells. That, and Theresa Chapman's lemon room freshener. Who knows what we'd find in the other houses.”

She glanced over at him, wishing she hadn't brought it up, hadn't put the idea in his head. She wanted to tell him to be careful, but he hated that, hated to be coddled. “You want to call Ryan and Clyde, see if they had any luck on the freeway?”

Joe punched in Clyde's number. The phone rang once, then went directly to voice mail.

“Doesn't have it on,” he growled. Clyde made him crazy when he did that. He tried Ryan's cell.

“Flannery,” she said on the first ring.

“We're headed back,” Joe said. “Nothing.”

“Ditto,” Ryan said. “I called Dallas, gave him a description, told him the guy was watching us and maybe watching him and Juana. Anything else you remember, anything you want to add?”

“Nothing,” Joe said, wishing he'd seen the guy's face.

“We're going on up to look at that vacant ranch,” Ryan said, “then check the remodel, then meet Helen Thurwell to look at the other houses. She wasn't happy that we had to reschedule. You want to join us?” she said brightly. He could just see her smart-assed grin, knowing how he hated looking at houses.

“I'll pass on this one,” he said. All those smells of strange humans and strange animals, of sour clothes and toxic cleaning solutions. Someone else's empty house wasn't
his
territory. If it had no connection to a crime scene, he wasn't interested in exploring.

“See you at home,” she said, laughing at him. “Lupe's Playa for dinner, if we get back early?”

Joe licked his whiskers at the thought of a Mexican supper. As she rang off, he imagined the yellow roadster turning off the freeway, going through an underpass or over a bridge and taking an on-ramp south again, heading up in the hills above the village to resume their maniacal new obsession of house hunting.

What good was it, he thought, if Clyde stopped collecting old cars and grew equally involved with old decrepit houses? Both pursuits were, in Joe's opinion, the human's mindless and futile attempt to revive and save the known world.

As Charlie turned down Ocean toward the village, he started thinking again about Juana and Dallas, wondering why they hadn't made that guy when he'd been spying on them.

“What?” Charlie said, looking over at him as she slowed at a stop sign.

“How could they miss him? Down at the Parker place?
And if they did see him, why didn't they arrest him or at least question him?” The more he thought about that, the more irritated he became. It was the first time he'd ever felt anger at a cop, certainly at either of those two.

“You don't have much faith in our detectives,” she said, pulling away from the stop sign. “Maybe they didn't see him, with all the overgrown bushes and tall fences. Even the best officer might miss someone completely hidden, Joe. Maybe he slipped inside a house. Maybe…” She was silent a moment, turning onto her aunt Wilma's street, then she reached to stroke his back. “Don't be cranky. That guy might have been just some nosy neighbor, we might have gotten all excited for nothing.” She pulled to the curb in front of Wilma's cottage. “If that guy was the housebreaker—or was your killer—dispatch has his description. Maybe one of the units will pick him up.”

Wilma Getz's stone cottage stood beneath spreading oaks, with not a bit of lawn in front. A deep, richly flowered garden spread away to the house. The roof was dark slate, slippery to the paws when wet with rain, warm as a stovetop beneath the summer sun. In the window of Wilma's living room, they could see Dulcie looking out, lashing her striped tail, and Joe brightened at the sight of his tabby lady. Her paw was lifted, her green eyes intent on him. Charlie watched them, and smiled. In spite of the human scum one encountered, one could always find honesty and truth among the animals—and find wonder. The world was an exciting place when you knew its secrets, when you could share in a feline miracle as real
and amazing as a little speaking cat lifting her paw in greeting.

Stroking Joe and picking him up, Charlie got out of the Blazer and headed inside. In her arms, Joe wriggled with impatience, then leaped down, racing ahead to the cat door.