Cat Shining Bright

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  He knew Crowley’s footfall. He heard the faintest hush of a door closing. Crowley stopped, they both stood still, one at each end of a narrow yard, listening, the faintest streak of moonlight touching Crowley’s cap where he stood by the corner of the garage; the walk-in door was halfway between them.

  When there was no more sound, when they shone their lights around the door and into the shrubbery there were only empty shadows. Jimmie flashed his light once, then covered his tall partner while Crowley, wearing gloves, tried the door.

  It was locked.

  Moments earlier when Wilma’s stalker had slipped out the guest room window carrying the box, he heard McFarland come out behind him. He knew there’d be other cops. Earlier, he had jimmied the lock of one of the garages down the row—when he heard McFarland drawing too near then heard a second man running, he eased open the door, slipped in, locked it from inside. He heard them try the door, fiddle with the lock, then soon they moved on down the row of houses, one at each end of the side yards.

  The garage was neat and uncluttered. Low moonlight shone through the narrow, obscure glass in the big double door. There were two cars, both of them unlocked. Silently rummaging, he found little of value in the Ford Taurus.

  In the black Mercedes he found, shoved back under a tangle of pamphlets in the glove compartment, the concierge key on a big ring. People were so stupid. They hid, or thought they had hidden, the nonelectronic model so when they went out to dinner or to a hotel they could give the attendant only the car key, no opening codes, no handy house key attached. He was thinking about starting the engine, opening the garage fast and taking off, when he heard a car start up the street, heard it move away south. A quiet, heavy vehicle that could be a cop car.

  Quickly he left the garage, he couldn’t lock the side door behind him but the cops had already checked it. Slipping away, keeping to the shadows, he was lucky this time, the patrol car had gone on.

  Moving fast and silently along the dirt path, he hustled down the last four blocks to the little corner grocery. He stepped behind it into the narrow strip of woods that separated it from the motel above and from Ocean Avenue. There were two homeless men asleep between the pines. They didn’t wake. The grocery’s little parking lot, which opened to the cross street, was empty. Staying beneath the bordering trees, he watched for the dark SUV that would pick him up. He had no notion that he was stalked by more than cops. When he heard a car coming he was prepared to race to it—until he saw the cop car behind it, and backed deeper into the woods. It wasn’t his ride anyway, but a white minivan.

  Dulcie, running shoulder to shoulder with Courtney, didn’t say a word to her. She couldn’t talk, with cops down there on the street, and if she did speak, she didn’t know what would come out; she didn’t want this to end in a spitting match—she was so mad at Courtney for following Joe that she wanted to smack the headstrong kitten.

  But Courtney had only meant to help her daddy. The calico’s busy paws tore across the shingles, her determined little face so coldly serious that Dulcie couldn’t scold her. They had crossed Ocean Avenue under dark trees, well behind Joe. There was no traffic. They climbed a vine silently and hit the roofs again. They were on the shop next to the little corner grocery when suddenly ahead of them Joe stopped. Dulcie and Courtney froze.

  But he hadn’t seen them, he was peering over the roof’s edge where trees lined the market’s parking lot, intent on a man hidden in the trees’ shadows. When the figure heard a car coming he moved out among the row of trees that led to the street. Dulcie could barely make out his long thin face. He carried the box, wrapped in paper. He stepped back when a minivan passed below, moving slowly. A cop car followed it.

  The officers pulled the driver over with flashing lights. They got out, ordered the driver out. He stood facing his van, hands on the roof. They frisked him and questioned him. They searched the van, looked at his driver’s license, then sent him on his way.

  At first sight of the patrol car, the burglar had slid deeper in the pines and shrubbery. Now, when the cops had gone, he slipped his phone from his pocket. He spoke softly. Dulcie watched Joe listen from the roof then quickly choose a pine and back down, she watched him warily. If someone was picking this guy up, she knew what Joe meant to do.

  “You stay here,” she told Courtney; but already the young cat was wired to move. “Right here!” Dulcie repeated. “Don’t you dare go down off this roof, not for anything. If I . . . if you are left alone, you are to go to your pa’s house. Do you know how to get to the Damens’?”

  “Of course I know,” Courtney said, bristling. “Down that street four blocks, and to the left past Barbara Conley’s with the yellow tape.” And she turned her face away, sulking.

  As Dulcie slid into a bougainvillea vine and down among its thorny branches a car pulled into the lot, a dark, older SUV. At once the thief fled from the bushes and opened the driver’s side back door. He folded half of the backseat down so it matched the platform of the rear storage space. Leaning in, he rummaged among the jumble at the back, tucking the box he carried under some duffel bags and bundles.

  Behind him, Joe Grey sped for the open door, leaped in and slipped over behind the passenger’s seat. He could say nothing as Dulcie flew in and pressed against him; he glared at her, furious, ears back, yellow eyes narrow. He watched her claw a dark blanket down from the seat above them. As they slid under, Courtney flew in behind them.

  They couldn’t scold, they daren’t even whack her lightly for fear she’d hiss and fight. This calico was getting too big for her britches.

  Quietly the thief shut the door, went around and opened the front passenger door and slipped in. The driver took off, skidding as he turned.

  Headed where? Where was he taking them?

  Dulcie pushed the blanket aside for a little light. Courtney was wide-eyed and shivering. She hadn’t thought, she had only meant to help her pa. She hadn’t helped him at all, and now she was filled with fear. Dulcie thought of the time Joe had gotten in a car headed who-knew-where, and ended up in the parking garage of the San Jose airport, some eighty miles north. Lost, alone, surrounded by cars driving in and pulling away, a regular riot of moving wheels, he’d seen a woman he knew shot to death. He had, at last, stolen a cell phone from an open truck, had called Clyde and Ryan to rescue him.

  Now, sliding around where she could see between the two front seats, Dulcie got a look at the driver: a heavy fellow, dark, short hair, heavy shoulders. He was built like Pan’s description of the car thief that windy night, the man whose trail bore the same white, flaky evidence as that from the beauty salon murders. Looking closely, she could see the same white specks stuck in the crepe soles of his dark shoes.

  Kit and Pan hit the roof of the village market at the moment that Joe Grey, Dulcie, and Courtney dove into the dark SUV, saw them flash into the car and disappear. “Oh my,” Kit said and crouched to leap after them but Pan jerked her back, teeth and claws in her shoulder.

  The two cats had, shortly after they’d returned home from dinner at the Damens’, slipped away again after giving Lucinda and Pedric face rubs, and loving them. They beat it out the cat door, headed for the stakeout at Wilma’s house where they knew Joe would be. There they had waited on the roofs across the street for a long time, they had watched Wilma’s living room light go out, then the reflection of the bedroom light come on, glancing off the pale back hill—and Wilma’s stalker appeared from the shadows near the front door.

  This time he must have had a lock pick; it didn’t take long and he was inside. They came down from the neighbor’s roof and up onto Wilma’s shingles. They listened to him toss the house, the living room, the kitchen, they moved across the roof just above him the way they might follow the underground sounds from a squirrel tunnel. They heard, after some time, the stealthy sliding of a closet door in the guest room, the dry sound of shuffled boxes. Where was Jimmie? They scrambled down from the roof, they were racing for Dulcie’s cat door when the
y heard a back window slide open, heard the soft sound of running on the dirt path behind the house. From that moment, everything was confusion; climbing to the roofs again, leaping across the side yards scrambling from tree to tree chasing running footsteps. More than one man running but, in the dark below them, in the windblown night, all was uncertain. What they thought was the perp turned out to be a cop. What they thought were two perps, they saw suddenly were McFarland and Crowley. Where was Joe Grey? The running was louder, then it stopped; a door opened and closed softly. Silence, then a cop approached the door, found it locked, and moved on, looking back. The cops were gone when the door eased open and a tall, thin man came out, closing it behind him. He ran, almost soundlessly, racing along the edge of the hill and behind the village market. When he hid among the trees they crouched on the roof, listening.

  They could smell Joe Grey’s scent on the shingles, could smell Dulcie and Courtney. Below, the black, windy, moonlit scene held them, the white van and the cops’ car, then the dark SUV, the perp leaping in, the three cats behind him. Kit crouched at the edge, ready to leap down. Pan grabbed her, stopping her—and the car skidded away, turning onto Ocean.

  They followed up Ocean, over cottages and shops. When they couldn’t see up the hill any farther they scaled a tall pine to the top. “There!” Kit hissed. The SUV was climbing the last hump to the stop signal. They waited, panting, to see which way it would turn.

  It turned north where Highway One would lead to a cluster of freeways. Kit couldn’t stop shaking. Oh, how did Joe let this happen? And the road was empty behind, no patrol car was tailing them. How did the cops, scouring the neighborhood, how could they miss such a blatant escape? Kit wanted to yowl.

  “A phone,” Pan hissed, and they spun around, heading down the tree, dropping from branch to branch. Joe’s house was the nearest; but as they dropped to the sidewalk Kit said, “Wait . . . Wait one minute.” She raced across the parking lot to where the SUV had stopped. She sniffed where its tires had stood, smelling at the paving; she looked up at Pan making a flehmen scowl. The pavement smelled of . . . what?

  “Garlic,” she said, inhaling again. “Garlic, geranium, eucalyptus, and . . . goats.” It was a sickening combination. “And here’s a eucalyptus leaf bent and crunched as if it fell out of a tire tread.”

  “There are eucalyptus trees all over the village.”

  “But that’s exactly what grows at the edge of Voletta Nestor’s weedy yard. I notice it every time we hunt on the Pamillon land, the eucalyptus, that ornamental garlic, its long silver grass. Red geraniums. And the damned goats,” she added. She looked at him, her eyes bright.

  “Come on,” he said, and they raced through the dark for Joe’s house.

  “If we can slip into the kitchen,” Pan said, “make the 911 call without waking anyone . . .”

  “But we’ll have to wake Clyde, we need wheels. We can tell the cops about the car the prowler got into, and which way it went. I couldn’t see the license, only the first part, 6F . . . couldn’t see the rest. But how do we tell them that three cats are trapped in there, that the department’s Joe Grey is shut inside with those crooks?” She shivered, approaching the Damens’ cat door. The night was moving toward dawn, and where were Joe and Dulcie and Courtney headed? Slipping inside through the little plastic door, hurrying to the kitchen and a phone, Kit imagined the car turning onto the freeway, its three stowaways crouched out of sight, unable to see much out the windows above them, no idea where they were going or what would happen to them, and again she thought, Why did Joe do this? Dulcie and his own kitten? How could he let this happen?

  18

  Joe and Dulcie knew they were on Highway One, they had felt the car turn north. Soon they felt the echoing rumble as they went through the long tunnel where, above the highway, the grass grew tall, the land rolling away into the hills so one often forgot that the freeway snaked underneath. They sometimes hunted that lush verge, so dense with ground squirrels, snakes, and mice. Often they caught the scent of coyotes there or a cougar or bobcat that had come down into the village canyons. Now, the cats were more tense at their present situation than at the smell of a four-legged predator. Dulcie and Courtney wished they hadn’t jumped in the car so rashly but they couldn’t have left Joe to be carried away alone. What had he been thinking, to trap himself in here with two killers? Courtney wished her daddy hadn’t come out tonight, wished they were all safe at the Damens’, snuggled among the quilts with Wilma. When they felt the car change lanes, felt it speed tilting down an exit ramp, they dug their claws into the floor mat. Then they were on level road again, moving fast to the northeast.

  “For crissake, Randall, slow down.”

  “Let it rest, Egan.”

  The cats looked at each other. Egan? Then the AFIS records hadn’t missed anything, this man really wasn’t Rick Alderson—unless he was using a fake name.

  “We don’t need the CHP on our tail,” Egan said, “after that beauty parlor mess. Maybe, Randall, you need to be more careful.”

  “What I need,” Randall said, “is a hamburger, before we load up and take off.” Wide shouldered, muscled, and broad, was this the man who had been in Barbara Conley’s house that windy night?

  “We’re already past anywhere to eat,” Egan said. “Why don’t you think of these things sooner?”

  “I wanted to get out of there. Them cops . . .”

  “It was you said you’d drive. Ma would have done it, if you hadn’t argued.”

  “She’s all over the damned road. I love your ma but I wish we didn’t have to use her for transport.”

  “We need every driver we can get. You love her all right. And every other woman who gives you the come-on.” Egan turned, looking dourly at Randall. “You can cheat on them—cheat on Ma—but they better not double-cross you.”

  Randall jerked his hand up as if to smack Egan’s face.

  “Watch the road, for crissake.”

  “I’m watching the damn road.” Randall glanced up at the sky above them. “Hope they’re ready. It’ll be getting light soon, we don’t have that much time.”

  Dulcie looked again at the driver’s short black hair, dense and wiry, and thought of the black hair in the trace evidence that the cops had bagged from the murder victims. Slipping over behind the driver’s seat, she peered around to get a good look at Egan, his long thin face, thin nose, and light blond hair. That color hair hadn’t been among the evidence at the murders, but his blond hairs had been collected in Wilma’s house, and Barbara’s, along with the bits of Styrofoam packing that stuck to everything. They could smell the men’s sweat. And could smell the mud on Egan’s shoes—mud from behind Wilma’s house, the scent of mint that grew at the foot of the hill.

  Courtney, clinging to her mother, trying not to panic at what might lie ahead and trying not to feel car sick, closed her eyes and ducked her face under her paws. Willing her memory-dreams to take her, carry her away from whatever was going to happen.

  Closing her eyes, slipping into another time, another place away from her terror, she eased down among sod houses with thatched roofs, a woman she had loved, milking a small, cranky cow, her long hair tied back, her rough-spun skirts muddy along the hem.

  But fear was there, too. When the woman’s sour husband came out and started sharpening a sword, the calico had fled. The scene was so clear. Soon there were more men, in steel armor and helmets, tall men on horseback. She felt the woman pick her up and carry her into the cottage, then the dream twisted into a haze of tall mountains, then broke apart into a meaningless jumble, the woman holding her softly; and she slept.

  Dulcie, snuggling her kitten, knew she was off in another time. She felt both curiosity at what Courtney was seeing, and envy that she could bring back those ancient days—just as their friend Misto had remembered his past. As sometimes Kit while dreaming reached out a paw as if to touch someone or something that, in sleep, must seem very real.

  Randall had slowed and was looking
around almost desperately as if seeking a way past something ahead. The cats could see nothing from their angled view up through the windows, could see only night and the flash from moving car lights. Randall slowed even more, pulled over abruptly onto the bumpy shoulder, speeded up as if to go around some impediment—but suddenly slammed on the brakes. “Hell! Damn it to hell!” His maneuver woke Courtney, startled at his shout and at the lights all around them glaring through the windows, blazes of flashing red, now, that could only be the demanding signals of emergency vehicles.

  Earlier that night, when Kit and Pan had raced to the Damens’ to call 911, they’d thought the house would be dark, that everyone would be asleep. But a light burned in the living room, glowing through the plastic cat door as they slipped through.

  Three scowls met them: Ryan and Clyde and Wilma, in their nightclothes, solemn with anger. Kit and Pan could smell their fear.

  “Where are Dulcie and Joe and Courtney?” Wilma said. “Oh, they didn’t go home to my house? Not in the middle of a stakeout? Oh, Kit! Why do you think I brought Dulcie and Courtney over here, but to keep them safe!”

  “But I . . . we didn’t,” Kit began.

  “Where are they?” Clyde said, his frown fierce. He wore a Windbreaker over his sweats and was jingling his car keys. Kit had never seen him so angry, she didn’t know what to say, she didn’t know how to tell them.

  “The phone,” she whispered. “We need . . . They’re in the getaway car . . .”

  Ryan fled for the kitchen, Kit in her arms. Within seconds she had dialed 911; she held the headset for Kit, her own face pressed close to listen. Behind them Clyde and Wilma crowded against them.

  “The stakeout at Wilma Getz’s house,” Kit told the dispatcher. “Two men took off from the market parking lot, maybe ten minutes ago. Dark older SUV, maybe a Toyota. First two numbers of the license are 6F, that’s all I could see. They’re heading north . . . Heavy man like a body builder, dark hair. Thin young guy, blond, long thin face . . .” She paused a moment, thinking how lame was her little whiff of scent-evidence, wondering if it meant anything.