When she got no answer she left a message, irritated, and clicked off. Turning away among Emmylou’s trees, she headed back to the Mercedes, through the overgrown yards. Slipping in behind the wheel, she hoped he wouldn’t hear the engine start, or would think it was just some neighbor pulling out. Easing down the street and onto his street, she couldn’t see the garage now, it was on the other side of the forlorn gray cottage; not until she was level with the house did it come into view again.
As she turned into the drive, the dropping sun was in her eyes, it was hard to see inside past the Lincoln. She could sense him watching her, as if maybe he stood deeper in, where the shadows were dense. Letting the engine idle, she hit Clyde’s number again.
Still no answer. She eased on down the drive toward the garage, glancing up toward the pine tree where Kit crouched among the thin branches. Stay put, Kit, just stay where you are. He came out of the garage fast, heading for her car as if he meant to jerk the door open. She didn’t kill the engine, she let it idle. As she hit the master lock she dropped the phone, felt frantically along the seat for it. When she looked again he had moved to the edge of the drive. She watched him grab up a short length of two-by-four, and turn. He came at her fast, swinging at the window, his pale eyes flat and mean. She ducked, fishing under the seat for some weapon, maybe a wrench left by one of the mechanics. She found nothing, but then scrabbling deeper she found the phone. He swung his makeshift club, and she covered her face. The window shattered, crazing into a pattern like snowflakes. She gunned the engine, put it in gear, gave it the gas again as if to back away from him up the drive.
Instead she sent the Mercedes leaping forward, braking only as her front bumper rammed the back of the Town Car, solidly blocking it. He came at her again, striking at the broken window, glass flew around her in a cascade of particles. He hit it again and reached through, grappling for the lock. She snatched up the phone, brought the end of it down hard on his wrist. He yelped and drew back and then lunged at the door. He had reached in, grabbing for her, when darkness exploded from above him from the roof—and the world was filled with cats, a tangle of clawing, screaming cats.
EARLIER IN THE day, having searched the neighborhood for the Lincoln, Joe and Pan had given up at last and headed away into the village. Their fur smelled of juniper bushes, every garage they’d investigated stunk with overgrown foliage crowding its old walls. Where they’d been able to find a thin crack beneath a tight-fitting door, they’d detected only the smells of empty oil cans, caked dirt, and mice. When they’d leaped up at dirty garage windows they’d seen nothing within but a broken chair, old cardboard boxes filled with who knew what refuse, and a rat-eaten couch, the cotton stuffing leaking out across the concrete. They’d searched for the Lincoln until both were cranky and hissing at each other, then they hit the rooftops hoping to see the Town Car parked on some farther-off, out-of-the-way lane. But soon, growing discouraged even with that futile effort, they simply ran, working off their accumulated frustration. In the center of the village they raced up the stairs of the courthouse clock tower, to the parapet high above.
Leaping to the rail, they had prowled along it looking down at the rooftops and crowded streets, focusing on each long black car they spotted, but knowing that this, too, was an exercise in futility. They were circling the rail yet again when Dulcie came racing up the stairs, looking up at them. She paused on the little tile balcony.
“There’s been a murder,” she said, “at the hospital. Those men staying up behind Emmylou’s, looks like one killed the other. Killed him right there in the ICU. Emmylou’d found the one man hurt, lying in that stone house behind her place, she called the ambulance and . . .”
The two toms dropped down to the tiles beside her, giving her their full attention.
“Pedric heard it all from Emmylou when they took him back to the ICU before they moved him to his new room. He got a glimpse of the man from his gurney, he was just being tucked up in bed again when the whole place exploded in an uproar and Pedric saw him running out. Pedric swore the guy was wearing his sport coat, the tweed one. He and Emmylou called Lucinda, she called and told Wilma, and I came to find you. Emmylou said Ryan ran out chasing the guy, that a nurse just coming back from her break saw them, she knew Ryan, she said the man took off in a battered brown station wagon. Debbie’s car? The nurse said Ryan chased him in a silver Mercedes, I don’t know where she got that car but the nurse swore it was Ryan. If he has Debbie’s car and goes back there, and Ryan follows him there, if that’s where he was headed, and Ryan’s all alone . . .”
“Come on,” Joe said. He leaped down the stairs hitting every fourth step, but halfway down the last flight, before he hit the street, he sailed onto the adjoining roof. The three cats, racing away over the peaks, their heads filled with questions, made straight across the village and up the hill toward Debbie’s hoping he was going there, where they could help Ryan if she needed help, and where they could summon the law. They were a block from Debbie’s cottage when they saw, between the pines, Kit crouched on the edge of a roof looking over, precarious and intent.
Leaping the chasms between cottages, they gained the roof beside her, to the accompaniment of breaking glass below as the man in the tweed coat swung his crude club, then yelped and drew back, then lunged at the door, reaching in grabbing for Ryan. The cats sprang, exploding down on him in a whirlwind of teeth and claws.
He twisted, shouting and flailing, and dropped the two-by-four. Fighting them off, reaching down for it, he lost his balance. Ryan was out of the car, pounding at him. He went down under her blows. She snatched the two-by-four away, and kicked him in the groin. He curled into a ball, whimpering. She yelled at the cats to back off, but Kit kept at him, raking and biting, she stopped only when Ryan pulled her away, forcing her clinging claws out of his arm.
Kneeling, Ryan held the end of the two-by-four hard against his throat as she frisked him. He looked at the four cats crowding over him growling, their teeth bared, and he lay still. She had pulled two packets of hundred-dollar bills from his pockets, stuffing them into the front of her zipped jacket, when he struck out again, hit Ryan in the face, and struggled to his feet. He ran—but not to the Lincoln, it was useless to him, blocked by Ryan’s car. He headed for the station wagon, jerked the door open, Ryan could see the keys dangling in the ignition. She grabbed Kit away as he swung in. Clutching Kit, she moved away fast as he gunned the engine, dodging the car as it shot backward burning rubber, careened the length of the drive, racing backward into the street, and took off.
Ryan held Kit tight against her, both of them shaking with rage. He was gone, but the Lincoln was safe. Her heart pounding, Ryan flipped open her phone.
This time, Clyde answered. “Sorry,” he said, “I was talking to the supplier, he thought he had the part, but he doesn’t.”
“You’re at the shop?”
“Just leaving.”
“I’m a couple of blocks south of the cottage, down from Debbie’s. Old gray house with the garage way at the back? Can you bring me those two tools your body guys use, to take the panels off a car door?”
“You found the Lincoln.”
“We did.”
“You okay?”
“Fine,” she said.
“You call the department?”
“Not until you bring the tools.”
“On my way.”
“Pick up some gloves,” she said.
He laughed, and hung up. It wasn’t twenty minutes until he pulled into the drive in her king cab. The cats, crowding into the dim garage behind them, peered up into the Lincoln as Clyde, putting on a pair of cotton gloves to prevent leaving fingerprints, removed the door panels. Lifting them off one at a time and reaching in, he began to remove the small white boxes, and he lifted out the little plastic containers of coins, too, all tightly sealed. Ryan placed each item carefully in a stained paint bucket that she’d
taken from the back of her truck.
But it was Joe and Pan together who, leaping up into the backseat of the Lincoln, rooting among the tightly packed bundles, found the scent of the old musty bills. Sniffing at bolts of fabric, at boxes and bags scented of far places, the two tomcats rooted down under the Greenlaws’ diverse and expensive purchases, and came up grinning.
“Try here,” Joe told Clyde.
Pulling packages away until he was able to examine the center console beneath, Clyde pulled down the armrest, revealing the small black tray with its cell phone connections.
“There,” Joe said, sniffing at the small square hole in the front. “Musty. The money’s there. Take the screws out.” Already Ryan was headed for the truck. She returned with a Phillips screwdriver, which she handed to Clyde. He unscrewed the tray and lifted it out.
There it was, the rest of the money, thick packets of hundreds stuffed tightly into the small space. He handed them out to Ryan, she packed them in the stained bucket atop the little boxes, filling it to the dented edge. Turning away to the king cab, she locked the bucket in one of the metal tool compartments along the side, arranging heavy coils of electric drop cords in front. Only then, locking the compartment, did she call the dispatcher.
She told Mabel they’d found the Greenlaws’ stolen Lincoln, and gave her the location. But as they talked, she watched Kit and Pan, up on the roof again sitting near but not looking at each other, both staring away into space—looking as if they wanted to make up, but both still too stubborn. She could see only a touch of Kit’s superior “I’m right, you’re wrong” expression. Pan, though he glanced sideways at Kit, sat tall and macho, still with a “I’m not changing my mind” look in his amber eyes. Both cats so hardheaded, Kit refusing to understand Pan’s hunger for new adventure, Pan just as obstinate, wanting Kit to thrill to his view of the world. Neither cat, even after their bold and concerted attack on the thief, willing to understand the other. And Ryan could only watch, disappointed with them both.
31
KIT LAY SPRAWLED on the dining table among the last pieces of jewelry that Kate and Lucinda had not tucked away in one bank or another, the gold and sapphires and emeralds reflecting bright shafts of light where the setting sun slanted in through the oak trees. With a soft paw she patted at the brooches and pendants, feeling like a queen counting her wealth, though it wasn’t hers at all. Lucinda was in the bedroom napping, Kate in the kitchen making a light supper, filling the house with the scent of grilled cheese on rye and herb tea.
It had taken Ryan and Clyde only a few minutes, yesterday, to strip the jewelry and money out of the Lincoln before they called the department, before the police were all over the car, lifting fingerprints, taking blood samples, and impounding the vehicle itself for closer inspection. But it had taken the two women all this morning and most of the afternoon to rent seven safe deposit boxes, each requiring them to open an accompanying bank account, to take the necessary cards and papers up to Pedric at the hospital to sign, and then return them to the banks. And then at last to retrieve the treasure from the Greenlaws’ padlocked freezer and tuck it securely away where, they hoped, the banks would keep the gold and jewels safe.
It was last evening after the police arrived to meet Ryan and Clyde at the small garage and go over the Lincoln, that Kit had trotted home shaky from their attack on Vic, and had made a follow-up call to the department. Talking to Max Harper himself, she had laid out in every smallest detail Vic’s murder of Birely Miller there in the hospital. She had hung up abruptly, of course, when Max asked for her name, as he always asked. Both knew he didn’t expect an answer to that question. Secrets upon secrets, she thought, pawing at the mysterious jewelry, and smiling.
Kate and Lucinda, after finishing with the banks, had kept back just this handful of antique pieces that lay scattered around her, now, each one featuring a cat or some mythical creature in its design. Patting at those Netherworld images, Kit thought about Pan’s hunger for that world, and she wondered if he would go there without her. But, then she wondered, would his attachment to Tessa keep the tomcat from leaving, after all?
That very morning when Ryan returned to Debbie’s, to put in the faucet herself, Tessa had whispered to her all about the man with the black car. It was the morning after the cats’ attack on Vic, and Tessa had told Ryan all about that, too, she had seen it all from the window above her bed. She had, much earlier in the day, seen him hide the Lincoln, too. The child had seen more than anyone guessed. “I didn’t tell Mama,” she whispered.
“Why didn’t you?” Ryan had asked her.
“She’d say I was lying. I’m not, that’s what I saw, that’s what happened. My Pan and those other three cats attacked that man to save you. My Pan is back,” she had said, smiling. “But, where is he now? When will he come to live with me again, to be my cat again?”
To that, Ryan had no answer.
No one owns a cat, and yet Kit knew that Pan, in his secret spirit, was indeed Tessa’s cat, just as Tessa was his person. Maybe, she thought, maybe Pan will stay here for Tessa, if he won’t stay for me.
But how will I feel about that? she thought, and she wasn’t sure.
She lay watching as Kate set the table around her, arranging the jewelry in a wicker basket that she put on the buffet. Kit watched her bring in the teapot and cups, watched her go to call Lucinda and help her get up; Lucinda’s cast was heavy and cumbersome, and was tiring to haul around. Walking out with Lucinda, Kate seated her in her own chair and brought in the sandwiches, steaming hot and oozing pale cheese with slices of salami peeking out.
Kate cut Kit’s sandwich in small bites and set the plate on Kit’s own place mat. Over supper they talked about Pedric’s knee surgery, a noninvasive laser technique that was scheduled for early the next morning; they discussed Birely Miller’s simple burial, which would also take place in the morning. Not until after supper did Kate read to them from her mother’s diary, from the later pages that she had found hidden among the moldering Netherworld volumes in the library of a fallen palace, the long passage disconnected from whatever the previous pages had told, from whatever had gone before or after those faded lines.
. . . all along. We have done our best to battle the royal families that would bring this world down. Inconceivable that the very rulers who benefit most from the labor of the peasants are now destroying their only source of food and goods, of the labor to produce what they need. Hatred, not logic, drives them. Hatred and greed. An evil drives them that comes straight from the hell pit and, in the end, will drag them down into the pit themselves. Soon we must get the baby out of here, must make the journey up into the surface world and find a home for Kate. I pray our one friend there, with Netherworld connections, can watch over her until she’s grown. Will there be any Netherworld left, when Kate is grown? I cannot bear to leave her, but we must return here and rejoin the battle, we must keep fighting.
There Melissa’s journal pages ended, the last page torn at the bottom as if whatever came after had been ripped away. “Maybe buried somewhere among the rubble of the palace,” Kate said, “buried in a world where no one reads books anymore or hardly knows what they’re for.
“Do you remember, Kit, the year I was given that other jewelry, by the old lawyer, the pieces he’d held so long for me in his office safe? That big old walk-in safe, the box hidden way at the back containing my mother’s journal, too? Do you remember how excited you were when you first learned of another world, how you had dreamed of such a place?”
“I remember,” Kit said quietly. “But that world was bright and happy, not crumbled and cold, it was not a dead world, then.”
Kate said, “You remember, Lucinda.”
Lucinda said, “Most of the earlier entries in your mother’s journals were bright. There was destruction even then, failure of the magic, but the world still held much of wonder. That was only the beginning, the failure
of that magic that your parents tried so hard to prevent.”
Supper ended in sadness, which none of them had intended. Kate rinsed the dishes, and they sat for a long while in the living room before the fire, Kit curled in Lucinda’s lap. She looked up often at Kate, still caught and grieving in the remains of that sad world where her parents had died.
BIRELY MILLER’S FUNERAL, early the next morning, was indeed simple, only a few words spoken by a funeral director who had never known Birely nor, if he had, would have approved of him. A few words and then without further ceremony Birely’s casket was lowered into the ground next to the grave of his sister, Sammie. Only a handful of people attended: Max and Charlie Harper, the Damens, Emmylou Warren, and Kate Osborne. Lucinda was at the hospital with Pedric. Those were the human mourners, if one could call their solemn attendance a kind of mourning. The five cats sat at attention, exhibiting varied degrees of pity, sat concealed behind a headstone featuring the image of a praying angel with lifted wings. Six humans and five cats silently attending Birely Miller’s last contact with the souls of this world. The day had turned heavy, with a wet, gray overcast that made the women’s hair curl willfully, and made the cats lick their fur to try to dry it. What Joe Grey wondered, as he watched Emmylou drop a handful of dirt onto the casket, was, Where’s Birely’s old uncle buried, old train robber Lee Fontana? Where did he end up, carrying with him the secret of that final robbery—escaping without restitution and most likely without remorse?
But maybe now Fontana would make restitution of a kind more valuable than the U.S. courts demanded. Emmylou, like Kate and the Greenlaws, had decided to give some of her newfound wealth to CatFriends, their local rescue group that Ryan and Charlie and a raft of volunteers had helped to start. Money to pay for cat food and supplies, to pay Dr. Firetti, who so far had donated all his services and all the needed medications. There’d be money, too, to build a central shelter where volunteers could care for the abandoned animals that were brought to them. Joe thought about the starving cats the group had trapped when, at the first downturn in the economy, so many householders left their homes with back rent or mortgages overdue, and left their pets behind.
Cat Bearing Gifts Page 22
