Cat to the Dogs

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  "Why would Pedric be any different? Face it, Dulcie. The Greenlaws are a family of thieves."

  "That doesn't make sense. What kind of family- Not a whole family, stealing-"

  "You think that doesn't happen? Of course there are families of thieves-what about the Mafia. The Greenlaws are small pickings compared to that, but-"

  Dulcie lowered her gaze, looked up at him quietly. Of course there were such families, she had read about them, the children were raised from babies to live outside the law.

  "But," she said softly, "even if it's true, even if the rest of them steal, that doesn't mean Pedric does. He could be different, Joe. If you'd watch him-in the evenings when he comes for supper, how polite he is, not just barging in like the rest, ignoring Lucinda. How pleased Lucinda is to get him settled in the softest chair, see that he's comfortable."

  "So he's a smooth operator. You know better than to trust how people act."

  "Lucinda wouldn't take him walking with her if she didn't trust him, and if they didn't truly enjoy each other. She wouldn't share Hellhag Hill with him, that's her private place. They have exactly the same interests. I don't see him using her."

  Joe laid back his ears, his yellow eyes narrow. "You're seeing what you want to see. I've never known you to be so gullible. You follow them, listen to Pedric sympathizing with her, and you go all sentimental."

  She hissed, lowering her own ears, switched her tail in his face, and hurried on down the grassy median- then stopped, crouching, looking fearfully around her as sirens screamed from the direction of the fire and police stations.

  A rescue unit thundered past, shaking the earth, prompting the cats to cower beneath the bushes. It was followed by three black-and-whites. Joe and Dulcie, their hearing numbed by the blast, watched the heavy vehicles heading fast for the shore.

  Following, galloping down the median toward the crowd gathered beside the sandy park, their first thoughts were the same as Charlie's had been, that someone had drowned, on this chill, foggy morning, some poor soul alone out in the dark sea. Then they saw a man lying on the ground, the paramedics bent over him-maybe a homeless man? They often slept in the park, near the rest rooms.

  But as the medics lifted the victim up onto a stretcher, the cats recognized a Molena Point resident, a man they knew only by sight. White hair, baby-soft face that was usually very red, whether from sunburn, excessive scrubbing, or excessive booze, they had no idea. Now he was as pale as a bedsheet.

  Trotting in among the crowd between jogging shoes, sweatpants, and bare, hairy legs, the cats stayed away from the uniforms-no need to upset Max Harper, no need to endure his puzzled glances. A confusion of comments assaulted them:

  "… stabbed. He was stabbed. I saw…"

  "… is he dead?"

  "Still alive, can't you see…"

  "… was lying there when that lady found him, I'd have fainted… some transient…"

  "No-he lives here, he comes in my shop."

  "… George Chambers. You know, the guy who…"

  The cats did a double take. George Chambers? Swerving out of the crowd, they skinned up a cypress tree beside the rescue vehicle, for a better look.

  George Chambers, a member of the sailing party when Shamas Greenlaw died. The man who, with his wife, had slept through the attempted rescue, had not awakened until the next morning, when the Green Lady put in at Seattle.

  From among the thickly massed cypress trunks that rose around them like dark, reaching arms, the two cats got a good look at Chambers. He kept moving his hand, trying to press at the stab wound in his chest that the medics had bound with gauze and tape, the clean bandages already soaked with blood. One of the medics was covering him, with a pair of thick brown blankets.

  So this was George Chambers. The passenger Harper had talked with twice about Shamas's accident, the mild-mannered fellow who had given Harper no indication that either he or his wife had, that stormy night, been awake to observe anything questionable about Shamas's death.

  So why had he been stabbed?

  They watched Captain Harper drop a rusty, blood-smeared butcher knife into an evidence bag. As the paramedics lifted Chambers's stretcher into the rescue vehicle, the cats clawed higher among the arms of the cypress, up into its dark foliage, out of sight of the police. Below them, Lucinda was talking with Officer Davis, a private conversation away from the crowd. The cats could catch no word; there were too many idle onlookers expressing their opinions.

  The two cats remained within the branches through several hours of photographing and examination of the crime scene. Among the areas of interest to forensics was a patch of sand where someone had been digging. They watched a kneeling officer brush sand away with a little paintbrush and sift sand tediously through a strainer. Four officers went over the cordoned-off area thoroughly, inch by inch. They bagged some bits of paper, a few loose threads caught on bushes, items that might link to the attacker, or might have been exposed in the damp and rain for months or years. When the cats left the beach they dropped down to the roof of the public rest rooms and to the far side of the building, out of sight of Max Harper. They came away from the Chambers stabbing knowing very little about what had happened. It was not until that evening that they were able to fill in some blanks.

  Joe woke from a nap in late afternoon hungry despite his feast of rabbit early that morning; somehow eating wild game always made him want human food to top it off. Half an hour before Clyde was due home, he called Jolly's Deli and ordered takeout, telling them to charge it and leave the food at the door. He had told Clyde he wouldn't do this anymore, but he hadn't exactly promised.

  Listening to the delivery truck pull away, he hauled the white paper bag in through his cat door and enjoyed, on the living-room rug, a nice selection of smoked herring, sliced Tilsit, and cracked crab. It was these little added luxuries that made his peculiar talents well worth the trouble they caused him. When he had finished eating, he pawed the containers back into the bag, licked up all telltale crumbs from the carpet, and carried the bag through the kitchen, out the dog door, and over the back fence.

  Glancing at the next-door neighbor's windows and seeing no one looking out, he stuffed the evidence into their trash. Clyde wouldn't know a thing until he got his deli bill-then he'd pitch a royal fit.

  Clyde didn't know a thing about the stabbing, either, when he got home from work. Only what he saw in the evening Gazette. After reading the front page he glanced at Joe, but made no offer to call Harper and glean a few additional facts. Joe wasn't about to ask him for that kind of favor. He'd be back on cheap, cardboard-flavored kitty kibble that hadn't passed his whiskers since his kitten days in San Francisco.

  As it turned out, it was Wilma who got the particulars about the Chambers stabbing, and told Dulcie. Joe found Dulcie on the back fence in her usual perch. "You might as well move your bed and supper bowl up here," he said, settling down beside her.

  She hissed gently and lifted a soft paw as if to belt him. "Something's going on. Dirken and Newlon are all worked up, really hassling Lucinda. You can't hear a thing, even with the windows open, with all those women in the kitchen. Can't they wash the dishes without so much jabber?"

  Dirken and Newlon stood before the hearth looking down at Lucinda where she sat in her favorite chair, sipping her after-dinner coffee. She looked drawn into herself, tense, glaring up at them. Both men were talking at once. The cats couldn't make out their words, but they were apparently interrogating her.

  "Chambers is more or less out of danger," Dulcie told Joe. "That rusty knife had sand from the park on it; forensics is pretty sure that's what was buried-it might have lain there for years, maybe a dog dug it up, or a transient making his camp, and the attacker found it."

  "Harper's not assuming that Chambers was stabbed by a transient?"

  "Of course he isn't. You know Harper better than that. Chambers was on the boat that night. Don't you suppose Harper's digging, don't you suppose he's got his teeth into this!
"

  "How did you…?"

  "Wilma happened to drop into the Iron Horse, earlier this evening. A special favor, for yours truly." Harper often ate at the Iron Horse when he was working late.

  "That's all she found out," Dulcie said. "It's all the police know, so far. Wilma said Harper had that tight, preoccupied look he gets when he's caught up in a tangle of evidence, when he's digging for the missing pieces."

  She returned her attention to the parlor window. "Dirken and Newlon tried all through dinner to get Lucinda to talk about the stabbing, to tell them what she saw this morning.

  "It was Lucinda who called 911. She told them she'd been out walking, saw the man lying there when she came across the park to use that awful rest room, that she thought he was asleep. Then she saw the blood. She ran to the phone, there between the men's and women's, but it was out of order. She hurried back to the village and called the station. She told Dirken that the rest is public knowledge-they could read it in the Gazette."

  Joe grinned. "So why all the fuss? They think she saw something more?"

  "Evidently. They're pretty wrought up."

  "You think they stabbed Chambers? That they're afraid Lucinda saw them?"

  "Maybe. Or maybe they want the goods on whoever did. Well, they've finished with the dishes," she said, glaring in at the Greenlaw women as they trooped toward the parlor.

  Dirken and Newlon had pulled up chairs facing Lucinda; they sat forward, pressing their questions at her. The kitchen crew wandered in silently and found places to sit-an eager audience, all watching Lucinda.

  "But you must have seen something else," Dirken was saying. "And why were you in the park at that hour? Just to say you went walking, Aunt Lucinda, doesn't make any sense. Who else was there?"

  "Enough!" Lucinda snapped. She stood up, scowling down at them. "That is enough. Stop it, both of you. I have had quite my fill of this."

  The cats watched with amazement. All the family was quiet, shocked that Lucinda was no longer a bystander in her own home, that she had made herself the center. Standing so fiercely, glaring at them, her very frailty seemed to increase her sudden surprising power. The cats thought she was going to say something about the stabbing; but instead, folding her hands before her in the traditional stance, Lucinda prepared to tell a tale-as if putting the subject of the stabbing behind her, letting the Greenlaws know that the matter was closed.

  Whether the old lady was becoming stronger in dealing with Shamas's family, or whether this was a move of extreme desperation, to gain a little peace, was uncertain. Standing in the place of storyteller, so skillfully did Lucinda lay out her tale that soon she had drawn them all in. The stabbing seemed forgotten- and they were carried into a story that surprised Dulcie, that made her fur prickle with excitement, made the tip of her tail twitch, and made Joe Grey fidget uncomfortably.

  "It is an American Indian tale," Lucinda said, "one I have read in three sources, as told by three different tribes. I don't believe the story springs from any Celtic telling; I don't believe there is any connection. But yet it is the same tale that comes from the Celtic lands.

  "It is peopled with the same enchanted beings, it tells of the same lost world. The Iroquois call it 'The Tale of the First People.'

  "In the beginning," Lucinda said softly, "in the beginning of the world all living things, all beasts, all men, all reptiles and insects and birds dwelt in the netherworld that lies below our plains and mountains. All was darkness in that place save for a thin green light that glowed down from the granite sky.

  "In those days the animals could speak, and many of them were shapeshifters. Human hunters would turn themselves into ponies. Great eagles flying beneath the granite skies could transmute into warriors. There were women and men who could slip from hearth to hearth in the form of cats but soon were gone again, unwilling to warm for long any hearth but their own.

  "The cat folk had their own cities among the hidden mountains, their netherworld caves fashioned into soft-cushioned bowers rich with carven furnishings, their walls set with pictures made from turquoise and jade.

  "One day when a princess of that people was digging at the roof of her cave, carving a new sleeping bower, she dug though into vast space. Her paw thrust out, into the upper world.

  "Shining through the paw-sized hole was a blaze of light that made the cat maiden cry out in fear. All the clan came running. The bravest crouched, squinting through the hole up into a gleaming and endless sky.

  "And the boldest among the cat folk dug the hole larger and slipped through, up onto the face of the earth, with only emptiness above them.

  "Soon other netherworld folk gathered, creatures from the hell-pit, the bird folk and serpent folk and then the giants, all peeping out into the upper world.

  "Many turned away again, too afraid to step out beneath that bright sky, but not the cat folk. They went up into that world digging and clawing their way, and not until evening came and the ball of fire rode through the sky toward the mountains, were the cats afraid.

  "They watched the sun sink down behind the peaks. They saw the sky grow dark, and they thought that by entering this land they had made the gods angry. They slept close together that night, crowded beneath a rocky ledge, sure that their spirits were doomed.

  "But the next morning, the sun returned. The cat people came out to preen in its warmth, and they knew that they were blessed, that this bright world welcomed them.

  "They wandered away over the land in every direction, and soon made this world their own. So the folk-of-the-cat came to our world," Lucinda told. "And so they have come and gone ever since, returning to the netherworld when they choose, living in both worlds and in both forms, sometimes cat, sometimes human.

  "And if there are cat folk in the upper world who can no longer change their form, it is because they have strayed too far from their beginnings, because they have forgotten the ancient ways."

  Lucinda turned from the hearth. The Greenlaws nodded and sighed with satisfaction. As Lucinda moved away from the storyteller's place, Pedric reached to take her hand, in a tender and personal gesture.

  Dirken watched the two old people with a cold scowl. Newlon turned away, his look uncomfortable.

  And on the fence beneath the maple branches, tears rolled down Dulcie's whiskers, their wet streaks marking her dark fur. The tale filled her with excitement and it scared her; it made her feel more than herself. The emotions it stirred turned her giddy.

  But Joe Grey leaped from the fence up into the maple's highest branches, his ears back, his scowl deep.

  He didn't like tales of a netherworld. Didn't like anything to do with his and Dulcie's mysterious history. Being himself, being Joe Grey, was quite enough. He didn't hold with some amazing and frightening past. He needed only himself and his loving lady.

  Dulcie was still purring extravagantly when Dirken and Newlon came out the back door and sat down on the steps. Newlon produced a pack of Camels, and they lit up.

  Newlon said, "You think she saw something more, on the beach this morning?"

  Dirken shrugged. "More to the point, you think she heard anything?"

  Newlon turned to look at him. "Did you do him, Dirken?"

  Dirken stared at Newlon, drawing on his cigarette. "Hell, no. Didn't you?"

  "I swear."

  But Dirken kept looking. "You did him. Stands to reason."

  Newlon turned to glance behind them through the screen as two large, aproned women began moving about in the kitchen, filling the coffeepot and cutting pieces of pie. Scowling, Newlon and Dirken shuffled a little more, then tossed away their cigarettes and went back inside.

  The cats, highly irritated at the vague and unfinished conversation, galloped away along the fence and headed up into the hills to hunt, Joe Grey so frustrated by the lack of solid facts that he felt like attacking the biggest granddaddy wharf rat he could find, launching into a raking, screaming battle.

  15

  WILMA LEFT her desk at the
automotive agency just before noon, hurriedly smoothing her gray hair and snatching up her purse, frantic to get out of the tiny salesman's cubicle before she started throwing heavy objects through its glass walls. Working in a transparent box made her feel like a lab specimen.

  Well, the job was only temporary. She'd be glad to get back to work at the library. She hadn't planned to use her month's vacation working a second job, even if it was proving more interesting than she'd anticipated. She had spent the morning running a credit check on the out-of-town purchaser of a white-and-cream Jaguar XJR. What she'd found had her most interested. With her mind on the buyer's skillfully forged IDs, she glanced across the automotive showroom, past the drive-through that separated it from Clyde's repair shop, and she had to laugh.

  Clyde had brought one of the pups to work, had left him tied just inside the glass door of the automotive-repair wing of the building, the pup all groomed and polished and sitting on a new plaid dog bed. All Clyde needed was a hand-lettered sign advertising the pup's many virtues.

  Who knew, maybe Clyde would find Selig a home among his customers; most of them were well-to-do; surely it would take someone with money to feed that big fellow and care for him.

  Hurrying down Ocean, enjoying the sun and the cool breeze skimming in off the Pacific, Wilma puzzled over her last three loan applicants.

  The first credit scams she'd investigated when she started work for Sheril Beckwhite, had occurred over a two-month period. From these, she had passed to Max Harper enough information to launch seven police investigations.

  But then this past week the action had heated up. She'd had five new applicants with impeccable credit ratings; her phone calls to their home numbers had been answered by a wife or by household staff. Their social security numbers, driver's licenses, all records corresponded to information filed in the issuing departments across the country. All were excellent credit risks. Each buyer had made a minimum down payment with a personal check, taking out the maximum loan; two had said they needed the tax write-off.