Cat Spitting Mad

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  "You're asking me? You want my opinion? The lowly house cat?"

  "Cut it, Joe."

  "You never ask me anything. All you ever do is-"

  "Kate and I had dinner last night. I think it's interesting that she didn't tell me a thing about the barrette."

  "Maybe the department told her not to. So what's your point?"

  "She told me-this wasn't in the Gazette, only in the San Francisco papers-that Lee Wark escaped from prison three weeks ago, with two other death row inmates."

  Though he knew this, a chill coursed down Joe's spine. Kneejerk reaction to the mention of Lee Wark.

  "Kate said prison authorities thought Wark might be in San Francisco."

  "I hope Harper knows this," Joe said.

  "Harper's not in the most talkative of moods." Clyde looked at him deeply, the kind of look that made Joe pay attention. "Kate said there's been a spate of cat killings in the city.

  "She's terrified it might be Wark. That's why she came down here, to get away. I don't have to tell you, Joe, that scares the hell out of me."

  "It doesn't make me feel like party time." Joe sat very straight. "Do you remember when Wark was sentenced? His outburst in court, that he swore he'd get Harper?"

  Clyde nodded. "That he'd get Harper. And Kate. And anyone else who helped do him." Clyde fixed Joe with a keen stare. "Wark knows you cats helped."

  He reached to touch Joe's shoulder, looking at him deeply. "Kate says that for a week before the Marner murders there were no cats killed in city. Two days after the murders, they started again."

  Fear sparked between Joe and Clyde.

  The idea of Lee Wark slipping around Molena Point made Joe Grey as shaky as if he'd eaten a poisoned rat.

  16

  LIKE A CAVE in the side of the hill, the Garza family cottage nestled against a steep wooded slope above the north end of the village, its living room windows affording a view of the village rooftops, while its kitchen windows looked up into the back gardens that crowded above it.

  The rafters and paneled walls were washed antique white, and the living area divided by a creamy stone fireplace behind which was a small, open study. Beyond the study were Garza's bedroom and bath. At the other end of the large, airy great room, before a deep bay window, stood a dining table big enough to seat a vast tribe of Garza relatives. A stairway tucked next to the kitchen led down to two additional bedrooms and a bath.

  On the shelf of the bay window among a scatter of patchwork pillows, Joe Grey sat eating broiled shrimp and pilaf from a flowered plate. At one end of the long table, Dallas Garza and Kate and Hanni enjoyed larger portions of the same fare, and a green salad in which Joe had shown no interest. The detective glanced up at Joe occasionally, amused possibly by Joe's excellent appetite, or possibly comparing him unfavorably to members of the canine persuasion. From the photographs on the walls, it was obvious that Garza was a dog man. Joe was surrounded by professional-quality color shots of businesslike hunting dogs. Pointers, setters, two Labradors and a Weimaraner, each picture accompanied by the dog's extensive pedigree and a list of his field honors.

  Some of the photos were not posed portraits but had been taken in the field, the dog carrying a pheasant or quail or duck to Garza or to Hanni; in many instances, Hanni was just a little girl-she'd had black hair then, but you couldn't miss those dark, laughing eyes.

  Joe knew of dog-oriented families where cats came under the heading of vermin-right down there with a cockroach in the kitchen cupboard. He was surprised Garza had let him in the door.

  Shortly before supper, Joe and Kate had made their entrance, Kate carrying Joe over her shoulder, asking nicely if the tomcat could stay for a few days. She said cats in the house upset Harper and made him sneeze, and that Clyde and Harper were painting the interior of Clyde's house, to keep Harper occupied in the evenings while he wasn't working. She said paint fumes were death on cats. It was true about the paint; Kate's manipulation of Clyde had been extensive, Joe thought, smiling.

  Garza had studied Joe with the same expression that, Joe imagined, he used on a particularly seedy transient arrested for mugging old ladies. "Can't Clyde take the cat to a kennel?"

  "Clyde put the other three cats and his Lab in the kennel. But Joe pines away. He won't eat. The last time Clyde boarded him, Joe worried and paced until he made himself sick.

  "And Wilma Getz couldn't take him; her cat has the sniffles- like kennel cough, you know." She had given Garza that lovely bright smile. "I don't want him to be a problem. It's just that… I volunteered, I guess. I could take him to a motel."

  Garza snorted. "You know you can't get a motel on short notice-particularly with a cat in tow."

  Kate had watched Garza diffidently, glancing at Hanni.

  It was then Joe made his move.

  Leaping down from Kate's shoulder and looking the detective square in the eye, he had meowed twice, boldly, the way a dog would speak, and lifted a paw to shake hands. Such pandering disgusted him-but he was doing it for Harper.

  Garza had widened his eyes and burst out laughing, a hard, bawdy cop's laugh.

  Joe had kept his paw raised, watching the detective with the same keen intensity he had seen in the expression of an attentive German shepherd.

  Garza, possibly impressed, certainly amused, had leaned down to shake Joe's paw. "I guess he can stay. As long as he doesn't spray the furniture. Who taught him to shake hands?"

  Kate said, "Clyde's taught him a number of tricks. Clyde says sometimes he seems almost as smart as a dog."

  Joe cut her a look.

  "Can he roll over?"

  "Roll over, Joe. There's a good boy."

  He had flopped down on the rag rug and dutifully rolled over, an appalling display of submission. He was going to kill Kate.

  Amazing what indignities a good sleuth had to endure, for a little inside information.

  "He can fetch, too," Kate said. Wadding up a piece of paper into a twist, she tossed it across the room.

  Joe fetched the paper back to her, quickly expanding the list of embarrassments he was going to visit upon Kate Osborne. She had sensibly ended the list of his talents with the fetching routine.

  Now, finishing his shrimp, he sat on the window seat washing his paws and observing the human diners, wondering if he could work them for seconds. With a few more "cute" exhibits of caninelike intelligence, Garza might have offered a glass of wine.

  Thus began Joe's surveillance of the man who had been appointed to clear-or to destroy-Max Harper. When, after dinner, Kate and Hanni went for a walk in the village, Garza retired to his desk and turned on his tape recorder. And Joe leaped nimbly onto the protruding end of the mantel, where he had a clear view of the top of Garza's desk.

  The first interview tape that Garza played, with Dillon's parents, made Joe feel deeply sad-and then angry.

  The Thurwells blamed Max Harper for Dillon's disappearance.

  Even with the heartbreaking tragedy of their missing child, they had no right to blame Max Harper. Harper had treasured that child, had been so proud of her increasing riding skills, of the way she handled Redwing.

  He supposed the Thurwells had to blame someone. Supposed that to blame Harper was only human. But Harper had taken such pains with Dillon, had taught the little girl a valuable discipline.

  The Thurwells were good to Dillon, but, as Dulcie pointed out, they didn't seem to see the need a growing child has for some direction in her life. Harper knew about that kind of need. He had given Dillon the goals she'd hungered for, had fostered the skills and the strength of mind that could keep her from going off suddenly on some tangent when she hit her teens. Dulcie said you didn't have to be a human to recognize that universal need.

  When Garza had rewound the Thurwell tape, he played Harper's statement to Detective Davis, and as the tape ran, he made detailed notes on a large yellow pad.

  The detective played back interviews with various personnel at the ranch where the Marners kept their horse
s, and with the manager and the three waitresses who had been on duty at Cafe Mundo the day of the murder. There was nothing in their answers to conflict with Harper's statement.

  Garza played, three times, his interview with the witness who claimed to have seen Harper following the three riders up the mountain, directly after lunch. The man was a tourist staying in the village, a William Green. He said he had been out biking, that he had recognized Harper because Green had lost his car keys the week before, and had gone into the station to identify them after a foot patrol found them, that Captain Harper had come in while he was signing for his keys, and he'd heard an officer call him by name.

  Fishy, Joe Grey thought.

  Green was very sure about his details. Joe felt easier when Garza made a note to check out the man's home address and background.

  At twelve-fifteen, Garza called it a night. Kate and Hanni had come in around ten and gone downstairs to bed. Switching off the desk lamp, Garza turned suddenly toward the fireplace, looking directly at Joe.

  "For all the attention you've given me tonight, tomcat, I'd say you were some kind of snitch."

  Joe's belly did a flip-flop. He purred hard and tried to look stupid. He could feel his paws sweating.

  Garza grinned. "Working for Max Harper? And does that mean you're working for the killer?" Garza's eyes were as black as obsidian, totally unrevealing. Joe regarded him as coolly as he could manage, considering he had a bellyful of hop-frogs.

  "Instead of spying on me, you might make yourself useful. This cottage has been shut up for months. It has to be crawling with mice."

  Garza tousled Joe's head as he would rough up a big dog, and headed for the bedroom.

  Well, maybe it was only Garza's way. Joe had heard him tease Hanni with the same dry wit, and had seen him ruffle her head, too.

  Retiring to the window seat, he curled up, listening to the night sounds through the slightly open, locked-in-place window. The small clock on the kitchen pass-through said 12:19. An occasional car passed on the street below, and later a party of raccoons began to squabble, chittering and hissing, and he heard a garbage can go over. He woke and dozed, and when next he looked at the clock, its illuminated face said 4:40. Something had waked him. His head raised, his ears sharp, he lay listening.

  The sound of footsteps reached him softly from up beyond the kitchen windows, and the rustle of bushes, sounds so faint that only a cat would hear.

  Dropping to the carpet, he sprang to the pass-through and padded silently across the kitchen counter. Keeping to the shadows behind the bread box, he peered out beside the curtain into the night.

  A man stood among the bushes on the hill, a dark shadow nearly hidden among the black masses of foliage and trees, a thin, tall man, looking down into the house.

  Was he stoop-shouldered like Lee Wark? Through the glass, Joe could catch no scent, but the look of the man made him choke back a stifled mewl, his voice as tremulous as a terrified kitten. In panic, he dropped to the floor, crouching behind the refrigerator, and stared up at the window, half expecting the man to slide it open and climb in. He was ashamed to admit the fear that swept him; he was scared down to his tomcat paws.

  But was it the Welshman? The shadow blended so well into the overgrown gardens that he really couldn't see much. And now, his nose filled with the stink of dust from the refrigerator's motor housing, he couldn't have smelled Wark if the man had stood on top of him.

  Leaping to the counter, he peered out again, but the figure was gone. He could see only the crowding houses and massed bushes, could detect no human shape within the indecipherable tangles of the night.

  Pacing the house, he worried until dawn, prowling in and out of bedrooms, making the round of partly open, locked windows both on the main level and downstairs. Twice he imagined he could smell Wark, but the next instant could smell nothing but pine trees and the lingering stink of raccoons.

  If that was Wark, had he come here looking for Kate? Joe began to worry about Dulcie and the kit; he wondered if they were out hunting, in the night alone. At 5:00, pacing and fretting, he leaped to Garza's desk, pushed the phone off its cradle onto Garza's blotter, and made a whispered call, watching Garza's closed bedroom door.

  Wilma answered sleepily, a curt and irritable "Yes?"

  "I think Lee Wark may be in the neighborhood, prowling around the Garza place, but now he's gone. Watch out for him. Are they there? Tell Dulcie she needs to be careful."

  "They're here. I'll see to it." Wilma asked no questions, wasted no time getting up to speed. Thank God for a few sensible humans.

  Beyond the closed bedroom door, he heard the detective stir. Pawing the phone into its cradle, he fled for the window seat, had just curled up when the bedroom door creaked open and light spilled out-and Joe was gently snoring.

  Maybe he'd been wrong, maybe it wasn't Wark out there. Could it have been Stubby Baker? Could Baker be interested in Garza's notes and tapes? Baker was tall and slim like Wark, and about the same height. He was straighter and broader of shoulder, but in the shadows, might he have appeared hunched?

  By 5:20 Garza had showered, made coffee, and was frying eggs and bacon. Joe, strolling through the kitchen, yowled loudly at the back door.

  "At least you're housebroken." The detective gave him a noncommittal cop stare and opened the kitchen door.

  From the garden, Joe glanced up at the window, expecting to see Garza's dark Latin eyes looking out, watching him, but the lighted glass remained blank. He found, beneath the window, the waffle prints of a man's jogging shoes incised into the damp earth; large shoes, certainly larger than Clyde's size 10s. Carefully prowling, he studied each area of bare soil, tracking the prints clear around the house, pausing where the man had stood looking into the downstairs bedroom windows.

  Surely neither Kate nor Hanni had been awakened and seen him. They'd have called the department-or come upstairs to wake Dallas. Presumably, Dallas was the only one with a firearm. Heading around the house again, he pawed at the kitchen door, bellowing a deep yowl.

  Kate opened the door. He stepped in, sniffing the aromas of breakfast. Kate and Hanni were showered and dressed, all polished and smelling of Ivory soap. Hanni sat at the kitchen table across from Garza, drinking coffee as Garza ate his fried eggs and bacon and sourdough toast. The detective glanced down at Joe absently but didn't offer to share.

  Evidently no one had pointed out to Garza, and he probably didn't know, that any ordinary cat, moved to a new house, would be kept in for a couple of weeks so he would become oriented and not run away.

  When no one offered him a fried egg, Joe fixed his gaze on Kate, licking his whiskers.

  Kate fetched a can of cat food.

  He looked at her, amazed. Cat food?

  "Cat food," she said, shaking the can at him. "I'm not cooking eggs for you. Dinner was one thing-you can share our dinner, but I'm not laying out caviar and kippers at six in the morning like Clyde does. Besides, you're getting fat."

  He hated when someone threw insults and he couldn't talk back. Fat? Kate didn't know muscle when she saw it. Under his gray velvet fur he was as solid as coiled steel. Studying the can Kate had flipped open, and taking a good sniff, he was relieved to know it was the fancy kind, the brand that, the commercials implied, should be served on a linen tablecloth from a crystal sherbet dish.

  He guessed Kate hadn't seen the commercials, because she plopped the fish concoction into a cracked earthenware crock and plunked it unceremoniously on the floor.

  So much for early-morning amenities.

  Grinning with sadistic pleasure, she turned her back on him.

  Garza, finishing his breakfast, rose and stepped to his desk. Joe heard him lift the phone and punch in a number-it was local, seven digits.

  "Max? Right. You want to come down to the station? I'll want another statement. Then I want to go up to your place, have a look at the house and stable, then on up to the scene. That fit with your plans?"

  All very friendly
and low-key.

  And Joe was stonewalled. He considered hiding in Garza's car, riding up to Harper's with the detective, then following the two men up the mountain-but he knew that wasn't smart.

  Garza, pulling on a suede sport coat over his jeans and shirt, headed for his Chevy coupe. When he had gone, Joe looked with meaning at Kate.

  She opened the door and followed him out, leaving Hanni deep in the arts section of the morning paper.

  Joe's whisper was hasty. "Someone came prowling last night. Stood outside your bedroom. Did you see him?"

  Kate turned pale. "No. Not a thing. Who…?"

  "Tall and thin. It could have been Wark."

  She went completely white.

  "There are footprints. Good ones. Garza needs to see them."

  "I-what'll I do?" She was clearly shaken.

  "Call the station. Tell them you just found the prints-that they seem fresh to you. That they go to the kitchen window, then on around the house. They'll send someone."

  "Shall I call Dallas? I have the number of his cell phone."

  "I-let the department handle it," Joe said, not certain himself what to do. "And walk around the house yourself first. So they'll believe you. Don't step on his prints." And he hurried away to make sure that Dulcie and the kit were safe, despite Wilma's promise. Racing down the sidewalks dodging early-morning shadows, he kept seeing that brief, muddy gleam of the man's eyes, looking in through the kitchen window.

  17

  IT WAS STILL DARK when Dulcie set out to find the kit. Prowling the village among the blackest pools of night, it wasn't hard to follow the tattercoat's smell, which had taken on a potpourri of eau de bath powder from Wilma's dressing table.

  Awakened by Joe's predawn phone call, she had galloped into the living room to make sure the kit was safe in her basket, and found her gone. With her mind on Lee Wark, she had stormed out her cat door, tracking the kit's boudoir scent over the roofs and across gardens and streets until she found herself doubling back to her own street some five blocks above Wilma's house.