Cat to the Dogs

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  "So what the hell," Joe said softly but angrily, as the poker game resumed. "All I've ever done is help Harper. Without the evidence you and I turned up, several of those no-goodniks sitting in state prison right now would be out on the street, to say nothing of Troy Hoke cooling his heels for murder in the federal pen."

  Dulcie curled closer to Joe and licked his ear. She had never seen him and Clyde at such odds.

  But it was when Harper mentioned Lucinda Greenlaw that Dulcie's own temper flared.

  "Your neighbor," Harper said. "In the old Victorian house behind you. You know her very well?"

  "Lucinda? Not really," Clyde said. "Wilma sees her pretty often."

  "She's an early-morning walker," Harper said.

  "I don't really know. What's the interest?"

  "Houseful of relatives right now gathered for Shamas's funeral. Pretty loud bunch, I'm told."

  "They don't bother me. I don't hear them."

  "Had a talk with Lucinda yesterday," Harper said. "Asked her to come down to the station, give me a few minutes away from the family." There was a pause. The cats could smell cigarette smoke.

  "She walks on Hellhag Hill a lot. I asked her if she'd happened to be up there the morning that Corvette went over into Hellhag Canyon."

  "And?" Clyde said shortly.

  "Said she hadn't been, that she'd stayed home that day. You… didn't happen to notice her that morning? Happen to see her go out?"

  "What the hell, Max? No, I didn't happen to notice. What is this? What time are you talking about?"

  "Around six-thirty. The 911 call came in, from someone in the trailer park, about that time."

  "At six-thirty I'm in the shower," Clyde said testily. "Or just getting out of bed. Not staring out my back window at the neighbors."

  Harper said no more. The talk from that point was limited to poker. The game ended early. The cats, dropping down from the heat duct, slipped out through the vent, forcing the pups aside, and headed for the open hills.

  They hunted most of the night, until the first gray of dawn streaked the sky. Joe's mood brightened once they'd killed a big buck rabbit and shared it. Settling back to wash blood and rabbit fur from his paws, he said, "Do you think she might have seen something that morning? Maybe saw one of Shamas's relatives down there, around the canyon, and didn't want to tell Harper?"

  Dulcie shrugged. "I don't think she cares enough about any of Shamas's relatives to protect them-well, maybe she cares about Pedric and Newlon. But would she lie for them?"

  Joe looked at her intently.

  "What are you thinking? That's stretching it, Joe, to look for a connection between the Greenlaws and that wreck''

  "Why does she walk so early?"

  Her green eyes widened. "You're as bad as Harper. She likes to be alone. You're a cat, you should understand that kind of need." She rose. "Fog's blowing in. She'll walk this morning. Come see for yourself." And she spun away at a dead run across the hills, perhaps running from a nudge of unease, from the faint discomfort that Joe's questions stirred.

  Down two valleys and across open hills they ran, through a little orchard and a pasture and up Hellhag Hill-to find Lucinda already there. They paused when they saw her, and went on quietly through the tall, concealing grass, watching Lucinda climb through the drifting fog to the outcropping of boulders where she liked to sit.

  Dropping her small blanket and her jacket, she moved on beyond the rocks some twenty feet to a stand of broom bushes. There, producing a package from her canvas tote, she arranged its contents on an aluminum pie plate; the cats caught the scent of roast beef, probably leftovers from last night's supper. Setting the plate among the bushes, she pushed it deep enough in so it was sheltered, but she would be able to see it.

  "The wild cats," Dulcie whispered. "They'll come through the bushes from deeper in."

  Among the boulders, Lucinda made herself comfortable on her folded blanket. Quietly turning, she looked up behind her in the direction of the trailer park. The cats didn't think she could see the trailers from that angle, nor could the occupants see her. There was no one else on the hill, yet she scanned the empty slopes expectantly, looking across the grassy rises and down toward the sea.

  "She's watching for the wild cats," Dulcie whispered-but she wasn't sure. Lucinda seemed unusually tense, to be watching only for the cats she fed.

  "Why do you follow her, Dulcie?"

  "I don't know. Sometimes… sometimes when she's here on the hills, she seems almost to be listening." She glanced at Joe. "Almost as if she hears some sound, something-"

  "What kind of sound?" he said irritably.

  "Some… something… stirring within the hill."

  Joe scowled and flattened his ears; he didn't like that kind of talk. She said no more, not mentioning that one day she had seen Lucinda lie down in the grass and press her ear to the earth.

  Maybe Lucinda had only been feeling the beat of the sea throbbing through the hill? Could Lucinda feel that vibration, as a cat could? Or had she simply been resting, comforted by the earth's solid warmth?

  It had seemed a very personal moment. Dulcie had felt embarrassed watching her.

  "Maybe she thinks she hears the ghost," Joe said.

  "Maybe." The local yarns that had given Hellhag Hill its name described a crazy old man, living a hundred years ago in a shanty atop Hellhag Hill, who spent his rime throwing clods at trespassers, and who had been stoned, in turn, by a band of village boys; two days later he had died from the wounds to his head and chest. The story said that his spirit had entered inside the hill, and, even to the present day, he haunted the cave that yawned higher up Hellhag Hill-an angry and possessive ghost drawing the winds to him and screaming out at strangers; sometimes you could hear his shouts and curses.

  Early-morning joggers claimed to have seen the ghost, but in the coastal fog one could imagine seeing anything. Tourists came to look for the hag, and spun wonderful stories to take home.

  Lucinda waited patiently, they supposed for any small sign of the stray cats approaching the food she had left. The shy animals didn't show themselves. Only when she rose at last and headed back, the hill now bright with sun, did the strays come out.

  They appeared swiftly behind her, thin, wary, dark-faced cats crowding around the pie plate, snatching up the old lady's offerings. Dulcie and Joe remained very still, watching them. The fog had blown away, the ragged cliffs below emerging dark and wild, the sea black and heaving, the narrow ribbon of highway glistening wet- only the crest of the hill seemed to be warmed by the rising sun. A scream startled Joe and Dulcie. They leaped for shelter. The strays vanished. Lucinda, halfway across the hill, stopped and turned, looking below her.

  The yelp came again: It was a dog, one of the pups. The cats knew that voice. A pup yowling with pain and fear. They reared up in the grass to see.

  There was no car on the highway to have hurt a puppy. Stretching taller, they saw Clyde and Charlie standing at the edge of the road staring back toward the village. Charlie held the bigger pup on a leash-that was the pup she had named Hestig. The pup fought his lead, lunging and trying to bolt away, his feet sliding on the asphalt as he tried to join his brother, who raced madly toward the village, yipping and screaming.

  Clinging to Selig's back was a small animal, a dark little creature yowling and clawing, its fluffy tail lashing with rage. When Selig swerved from the road, the little animal rode him like a bronc-buster; they vanished among the houses.

  Joe stared after them, torn between amazement and a huge belly laugh. "So that was what the pups were afraid of-a mangy little cat. That's why they didn't want to come up Hellhag Hill."

  Below them, down the hill, Clyde stood on the road, staring at where the pup had vanished. "What was that thing? What kind of wild-"

  "Cat," Charlie said, doubled over laughing, and trying to hold the plunging Hestig.

  "No, not a cat. It was some kind of wild animal. No cat would… My God. A cat?"

  "
A very small cat," Charlie said. "And very, very mad." She knelt and pulled Hestig close to her, stroking him and speaking softly until he became quiet. "A cat, Clyde. A tiny, angry little cat." She watched Clyde take off jogging, hoping to round up Selig. "They never," she told Hestig, "cats never cease to surprise me."

  "I hope," Dulcie whispered, "that little cat finds her way back." She imagined the little stray leaping off Selig's back in the middle of the village, confused among so many cars and people, not knowing where to run.

  "Those cats might be wild and shy," Joe said, "but they haven't survived without being clever. She'll be okay. Why was Clyde walking the dogs here? The highway's no place for those two."

  "Do you think he came to follow Lucinda, after Harper's questions about her?"

  "After he ragged me for being nosy? That would be more than low."

  They watched Lucinda, across the hill, hurrying down to join Charlie; Charlie had slowed, waiting for her. Lucinda fell into step, smiling as if she had enjoyed the spectacle of runaway Selig, as if she had liked seeing one of the wild, shy felines show some unexpected spunk.

  Lucinda and Charlie had known each other only casually, through Wilma, until Shamas's death drew Wilma, herself, to see Lucinda more often. Then Charlie, with her usual warmth, had taken a deeper interest in the old woman. Gently, Charlie put her arm around Lucinda, gave her a hug. "Did you see poor Selig? Was that one of the little cats you've been feeding?"

  "I believe it was," Lucinda said, laughing. "Wild is the word for that one."

  "How many cats are there, Lucinda? Are they all that wild? Where did they come from?"

  "I think there are six or seven. They appeared a few days after the quake. I only get glimpses of them, usually one at a time. Only that dark little cat-the one that just rode away on the back of Clyde's dog-only that one has had the nerve to approach me."

  "Cat the color of charred wood," Charlie said with interest. "Black and brown swirled together on the palette."

  "Tortoiseshell," Lucinda said.

  "They must be glad of the food you bring. Though surely they are hunters."

  "I'm sure they are. They're most likely feral cats, they're far too shy to be simply strays."

  The old woman was silent a moment. Joe and Dulcie slipped quickly through the grass, following close behind the two women. "Maybe," Lucinda said, "Pedric would have some knowledge about feral cats. Pedric is Shamas's first cousin. He seems to have some interesting theories about-feral animals." She hesitated. "Strange theories, maybe. But these cats strike one as rather strange."

  "Is Pedric the thin old man? The one of slighter build?"

  "Yes, that's Pedric." She glanced at Charlie. "He's… very kind. He's one of Shamas's relatives that I… feel comfortable with. He and Newlon Greenlaw. Newlon… tried to save Shamas, you know."

  Charlie nodded.

  "Pedric is… perhaps not as harsh as the others. Perhaps he has more of the old-country ways," Lucinda said shyly. "Pedric Greenlaw might have stepped right out of his own myths, out of the same dark and shadowed worlds that shape his folktales."

  "He sounds interesting," Charlie said, pushing back her windblown red hair. "I've always loved storytellers. It's a wonderful art: the skill to draw you in, make you see and live a tale as if you were there, to truly wrap you in the story."

  "Pedric… I think he looks at life through the lens of his stories… through the lens of dead ages. He clings to the old myths just as Shamas did, to the Irish beliefs and folklore woven through their family. That history was very important to Shamas."

  "I didn't know that about your husband."

  Lucinda smiled. "All the Greenlaws live to some extent a strange double existence. I think that in many ways they truly believe the old tales-believe in the old-world magic."

  She glanced at Charlie. "And yet another part of them-except perhaps Pedric and Newlon-is as cold and selfish as it is possible to be. That… that is the way Shamas was."

  Charlie turned to look at her.

  "Well, I'm not grieving for Shamas," Lucinda said softly. "If I am grieving, it is only… for myself, for what I have… missed."

  And, Dulcie thought, grieving for a life wasted. She thought about what Lucinda had told Wilma, in a moment like this when Lucinda seemed to feel the need to talk, perhaps to bare a bit of her soul.

  Lucinda had come to have tea with Wilma; Dulcie had been lying in her favorite spot on the blue velvet couch pretending to nap. Lucinda told Wilma that when the police came to her door that morning to tell her that Shamas was dead, she'd felt a drop of emotion straight down into panic, and then, almost at once, she'd been swept by a surge of relief so powerful that she'd tried to hide it from the officers, such a sense of freedom, of elation that the painful burden had gone from her life, that Shamas's lies and cheating were ended. That she could, at last, know some peace. Her words had seemed to spring from such a strong need to unburden herself; and when Wilma put her arm around her, Lucinda wept helplessly.

  She told Wilma that she should have walked away from Shamas years before, should have taken the responsibility to change her life, but that she'd never been brave enough. Had never had the courage to walk out on Shamas Greenlaw.

  But Charlie was saying, "Wherever those wild cats came from, the little creatures are lucky to have you, Lucinda." Gently, Charlie shortened Hestig's leash, to make him walk by her heel.

  "Maybe with time," Lucinda said, "they'll grow tame, and I can find homes for them. The strange thing is," she said, glancing at Charlie, "how powerfully those wild cats draw me. I don't usually think about stray animals; the world is full of strays, and I can't change the world. But these cats…" Lucinda shrugged. "Maybe they're something to hold on to, just now. Something outside myself, to love and care about."

  Charlie smiled at her, and nodded.

  "Perhaps," Lucinda said, "it's their freedom, too, that draws me-and the mystery of why they appeared so suddenly on Hellhag Hill, where, in all my years of walking there, I've seldom seen any creature."

  The two women turned down Ocean onto the grassy median, Hestig walking sedately at Charlie's side, watching his manners now, as if the spectacle of a cat attacking his brother had made a lasting impression. If the pup was aware of Joe and Dulcie slipping through the shadows behind him beneath the eucalyptus trees, he gave no sign other than to twitch an ear back, once, and wag casually. And soon Lucinda turned away, not toward her own street as she usually did, but in the opposite direction, into the heart of the village, leaving Charlie and Hestig to cross to Charlie's apartment above the shops on Ocean.

  None of the shops was yet open, but the little cafes were busy. The cats followed Lucinda, padding along behind, dodging joggers and dog walkers. The old lady was just passing the post office, watching a yardman across the street watering the planter beds in front of Cannady's, that nice Western shop that Dulcie loved, which had such beautiful embroidered denim and leathers. Cannady's front garden was brilliant with impatiens and lilies, behind its low wrought-iron fence. Lucinda had stopped to admire the garden when Dirken and Newlon Greenlaw came around the corner-and immediately Lucinda drew back into the shadows, stood very still, watching them.

  The two men were walking slowly just at the curb, so close to the line of parked cars that the cats heard Newlon's jacket brush against a rearview mirror. Both men walked hunched, their heads bent as if looking into the car windows.

  It took only a second. The two were quick; they paused, the cats heard a little click as if a car door had opened, another click as it closed again, and the men moved on, Newlon shoving something into his jacket pocket, some small item he had snatched from the seat of the car. A camera? A purse? Perhaps a cell phone.

  Lucinda stood staring, a look of shock and anger on her face-a look as if she had been personally affronted.

  Then she turned away and hurried into the Swiss House, taking refuge in the first empty booth, busying herself with the menu. The cats, leaping up onto the window b
ox among the flowers, watched her ordering, watched her settle back sipping her coffee. Lucinda was more than usually pale, and her thin old hands were shaking.

  7

  DINO'S HAD the best fish and chips in the village. Max Harper, having picked up an order of takeout, sat in his king cab pickup eating his dinner and watching, through the lighted motel window across the street, Cara Ray Crisp skinning out of her sweatshirt. Cara Ray hadn't bothered to pull the blinds. She was only a slip of a thing, tiny and thin, but well endowed, the kind of delicate creature who would have appealed exactly to Shamas Greenlaw.

  Harper had backed his truck into a narrow drive between Harren's Gallery and Molena Point Drugs, a lane so overgrown with jasmine that the vines trailed across the truck's roof and down the side windows. For some time Cara Ray had talked on the phone, lying nude on the bed, propped against the pillows, sipping on a canned drink; and now she was tying on a bikini top. As he watched her roll her long blond hair into a knot and secure it, and pull on the bottom half of her bathing suit, Harper had no notion that he, in turn, was watched, from the backseat of the king cab.

  Sitting on the cab floor behind Harper, peering up between the bucket seats, Joe Grey could see through the windshield the little pantomime in Cara Ray's lighted motel room, and he had to smile. Max Harper, spying on Cara Ray's strip act like some cheap voyeur, would be enjoying every rousing minute-free entertainment served up with his takeout dinner, all in the line of duty.

  The fish and chips smelled so good that Joe was tempted to slash out with a quick paw and snag a nice warm chunk of fried cod. Maybe Harper wouldn't miss just one piece. Why was it that, so often when he did a bit of surveillance, the watchee enjoyed a nice meal, while the watcher ended up faint with hunger?