Cat Under Fire

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  "It wasn't gunfire, Mama. I told you, it was just a staple gun. One of those big commercial staple guns. You know she used it to stretch her canvases. You know what she said, that putting in thumbtacks made her thumbs ache for days. Please, Mama, I've got to return this attorney's call."

  "You've got a stapler right in there on your desk, Frances. It don't sound like that. You know I'm right. That crazy artist set the whole hillside on fire. I always knew she'd do that. Burn up the whole neighborhood. If not for my prayers to save this house, we would have burned up, too."

  "Oh, Mama, she didn't…"

  "Anyway, you don't need to argue. I won't do it. I don't want to be a part of it."

  "But Mama, don't you see? You are a part of it. If you don't testify, they could convict the wrong person."

  Dulcie crouched, very still. The morning was full of surprises.

  A staple gun.

  Janet had stapled her canvases. She hadn't used thumbtacks.

  Then what was that thumbtack that had gotten stuck in her paw? That thumbtack with the burned wood and blackened canvas sticking to it? What were all those thumbtacks scattered among the ashes? There were hundreds of them, many with scraps of canvas clinging. Hundreds of fragments of paintings…

  She caught her breath. Mama stared down at her. She pretended to scratch at a flea. Those tacks were not from Janet's paintings they were from someone else's canvases.

  Those were not Janet's paintings that had burned. Janet's paintings had not been in the studio when it burned.

  "It wouldn't hurt your heart, Mama, just to talk to Joseph Grey. If I call him back, won't you just speak to him? He could take your deposition right here. And even if you did have to go to court, they'd make it easy for you. A special car, probably a limo with a driver. Get you right in and right out, not make you wait. I'll bet it wouldn't take forty-five minutes. We could stop for ice cream afterward."

  "Don't you patronize me, young lady. Besides, someone else must have seen her van besides me. Why don't they go to the police?"

  "It was two in the morning, Mama."

  "It was Saturday night. Young people stay up late."

  "Our neighbors aren't that young, Mama. At two in the morning they're asleep."

  "Yes, and no one cares if an old sick woman can't sleep. No one cares about an old woman sitting alone in the night-except to get information out of her." She stroked Dulcie so hard that static sparks flew, alarming them both. "Call him back," Mama said. "Tell him I won't."

  But when Frances tried, she had the wrong number. It was not an attorney's office, and no one had ever heard of Joseph Grey.

  Frances looked totally puzzled. "I know I wrote it down right. You heard me, I repeated it back to him." Frances was not the kind of woman to record a phone number wrong. As she dialed again, Dulcie jumped down, trotted into the laundry room, and leaped to the open window.

  And she was out of there. Racing across the yard straight for Janet's house. She could see Joe in Janet's window: Felis at Law Joseph Grey, his ears sharply forward, his white markings bright behind the glass, his mouth open in a toothy cat laugh.

  14

  The cats fled down the black, burned hills, down into the tall green grass careening together, exploding apart, wild with their sudden freedom. Four days hanging around the Blankenships' had left them stir-crazy, dangerously close to the insane release people called a cat fit. Flying down, dropping steeply down, they collapsed at last, rolling and laughing beneath the wide blue sky. Dulcie leaped at a butterfly, at insects that keened and rustled around them in the blowing grass; racing in circles she terrorized a thousand minute little presences singing their tiny songs and munching on their bits of greenery, sent them scurrying or crushed them. "I wonder if Mama gave in-if she let Frances call the police." She grinned. "I wonder if Frances tried again to phone Attorney Joseph Grey."

  She stood switching her tail. "If that was Janet's van that Mama saw, the Saturday night before the fire, what was she doing? She drove up to San Francisco that morning. Why would she come home again in the middle of the night, load up her own paintings? Take them where? If there'd been a show, her agent would have said."

  She looked at him intently. "Those weren't Janet's paintings burned in the fire, so whose paintings were they?"

  "Could Janet have hidden her own paintings, to collect the insurance?"

  "Janet wouldn't do that. And there wasn't any insurance." She lay down, thinking.

  "Of course there would be insurance," he said. "Those paintings were worth…"

  Dulcie twitched her ear. "Janet didn't insure her work."

  "That's crazy. Why wouldn't she? How do you know that?"

  "Insurance on paintings is horribly expensive. She told Wilma it costs nearly as much as the price of the work. The rates were so high she decided against it, said she tried three insurance agents and they all gave the same high rates. Wilma says a lot of artists don't insure."

  "But Wilma…"

  "Wilma has that one painting insured, with a rider on her homeowner's. That's a lot different."

  She was quiet a moment, then flipped over and sat up, her eyes widening. "Sicily Aronson has a white van. Don't you remember? She parks it behind the gallery beside the loading door."

  "So Sicily took the paintings, at two in the morning? Killed Janet and took her paintings, to sell? Come on, Dulcie. Why would she kill Janet? Janet was her best painter, her meal ticket."

  "Maybe Janet planned to leave her. Maybe they had a falling-out. If Janet took all her work away…"

  "You've been seeing too many TV movies. If Sicily tried to sell those paintings, if they came on the market, Max Harper would have her behind bars in a second.

  "And Beverly wouldn't take them, she inherited Janet's paintings." He licked his paw. "And if there wasn't any insurance, Beverly had nothing to gain." He nibbled his shoulder, pursuing a flea. Even with the amazing changes in his life, he still couldn't shake the fleas. And he hated flea spray.

  "Maybe," she said, "Sicily could sell them easier than Beverly. If she did, she'd keep all the money, not have to split with Beverly. With Janet dead, and with so many paintings supposedly destroyed, each canvas is worth a bundle."

  "Whoever has them could sell them. Beverly. Sicily. Kendrick Mahl."

  "But Mahl had witnesses to everything he did in San Francisco."

  Mahl had gone out to dinner with friends both Saturday and Sunday nights, leaving his car in the hotel parking garage. Mahl lived in Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge. He had driven into the city Saturday afternoon and checked into the St. Francis; the hotel was full of artists and critics. In the city he had taken cabs or ridden with friends.

  Dulcie scowled. "I guess anyone could have rented a van. When we know who was in that van, we'll know who killed her. I'll bet Detective Marritt didn't take one thumbtack, one scrap of the burned paintings as evidence."

  "Or maybe Marritt took thumbtacks but didn't bother to find out how Janet stretched her canvases. You'd think someone would have told him. Wouldn't Sicily?"

  "Unless she didn't want the police to know." Dulcie examined her claws. "It'll take a lot of phoning, calling all the rental places, to find who rented a white van that night."

  "Dulcie, the police will check out the rental places, as soon as they know about the van, and about the missing paintings."

  "Where would someone hide that many paintings?" she said speculatively.

  He sat up, staring at her. "You think we're going to look for those canvases? You think we're going to find two million dollars' worth of paintings? Those paintings could be anywhere, a private home, an apartment, another gallery… What do you plan to do, go tooling up and down the coast maybe in your BMW, searching through warehouses?"

  She smiled sweetly, cutting her eyes at him. "We could try Sicily's gallery."

  "Sure, Sicily's going to have those big canvases right there under the cops' noses. And don't you think Captain Harper deserves to know that the
paintings are gone, that they weren't burned?"

  "It would take only a few minutes, just nip into the gallery and have a look. If we find them, we'll be giving Captain Harper not just a tip, but the whole big, damning story." She grinned. "Not just a sniff of the rabbit but the whole delicious cottontail." Her eyes gleamed green as jewels. "We can slip in through the front door just before Sicily closes, stay out of sight until she locks up."

  His eyes gleamed with the challenge. But his better judgment-some latent natural wariness-made his belly twitch. "If we do that and get caught, I hope it's the cops and not Sicily."

  "Why ever not? She wouldn't know what we're doing. And Sicily likes cats."

  He couldn't, in his wildest imagination, picture Sicily Aronson liking cats. The woman put him off totally. With her dangling bracelets and jiggling earrings and tangles of clanking chains and necklaces and her blowing, layered clothes, she was like a walking boutique. Dulcie practically drooled over the expensive fabrics Sicily wore, the imported hand-dyed prints, the layers of hand-painted cottons drooping over her long, handwoven skirts. Her handmade sandals or tall slim boots smelled of the animals they came from; and her dark hair, bound up in intricate twists secured with strands of silver or jewels, was just too much. She did not look like Molena Point; she looked like San Francisco's bordello district, like some leftover from Sally Stanford days, when that madam was the toast of the city.

  And the fact that Sicily could amortize interest in her head, so Clyde had told him, and could accurately compute every possible tax write-off while making light banter or a sales pitch, made her all the more formidable.

  "She only dresses like that for PR. It's part of the gallery image." She reached a soft paw to him. "She's really nice. If she catches us in the gallery, she'll probably treat us to a late supper."

  "Sure she will. Braised rat poison."

  She looked at him, amused. "I've been in the gallery a lot lately, and she's been nice to me." And suddenly she looked stricken. "Oh dear. I guess… I hope we don't find the paintings there, I hope she didn't do it. I was thinking only of proving Rob innocent. But she has been kind to me."

  "I didn't know you went in there."

  "I've done it for weeks, sometimes at noon when court breaks for lunch, just to listen."

  "You suspected her?"

  "No, I just wanted to find out what I could. After all, she is Janet's agent."

  "So what did you learn?"

  "Nothing." She licked her paw. "Except she's a sucker for cats. But I guess most people in the art world like cats. Last week she fed me little sandwiches left over from an opening, and twice she's shared her lunch with me; and she folded a handwoven wool scarf on her desk for me to nap on."

  "With that kind of treatment, Wilma may lose her housemate."

  Dulcie smiled. "Not a chance. Anyway, if Sicily catches us in the gallery, just roll over, curl your paws sweetly, and smile."

  "Sure I will. And nail her with twenty sharp ones when she reaches down to grab me."

  She turned away, snorting with disgust.

  But in a moment, she said, "I wish we knew what to do about Janet's journal."

  "It's evidence, Dulcie. We have to tell the police where to find it. We've been over this."

  She sighed.

  He moved close against her, licking her ear. "The diary is Captain Harper's business."

  "But her diary is so private, it's all that's left to speak for her-except her paintings." She looked at him bleakly. "Why did that terrible thing have to happen? Why did she have to die?"

  "At least Janet left her work. That's more than most people leave behind them-something to bring pleasure to others."

  "I guess," she said, touching her paw to his, half-amused. Joe did have his tender side, when it suited him. "I guess that's better than poor Mrs. Blankenship. She won't leave the world anything but a house full of china beasties."

  Earlier, when she and Joe departed Janet's house, slipping away in the shadows so Mama wouldn't see them, she had looked back across the street and seen Mama sitting at her window eagerly waiting for her.

  "It was cruel to make her think I loved her, then to leave. Now she'll be more lonely than ever."

  Joe brushed his whiskers against hers. "You could get her a cat. An ordinary little cat who would love her. A kitten maybe."

  "Yes," she said, brightening. "A little cat that will stay with her." Her mouth curved with pleasure. "A sweet little cat. Yes, maybe a kitten. Or maybe the white cat. He'll need a home when we find him."

  He did not reply. In his opinion, the white cat was long dead-except, if he was dead, then what were these strange dreams? Did the dreams arise, as he hoped, only from Dulcie's active imagination?

  They headed down again watching the hills for Stamps's dog. The wild rye and oats on the open slopes was so tall and thick that the animal could easily crouch unseen. They did not see it on the streets below, among the gardens and cottages, did not see it near the gray house, or around the old black pickup. Dulcie studied the ragged house with narrowed eyes, and a little smile curved her pink mouth.

  "What?" he said.

  "Looks to me like Stamps's window is open."

  He said nothing. As they drew near where the pickup was parked, they saw the dog, a shadow among shadows, asleep in the truck bed.

  But even as they looked, the beast came awake and sat up and shook himself. Staring up the hill, he either saw them or smelled them, and he suddenly exploded, leaping from the truck straight up the hill…

  … and was jerked to a stop by a chain attached to the bumper.

  The cats relaxed, their hearts pounding. The dog fought the chain, rattling and jerking the truck, lunging so violently they thought he'd tear off the bumper and come clanging after them.

  But the chain held. The bumper didn't give; it seemed to be solidly bolted. "Come on," Dulcie said, "he can't get loose. If we can get in, get the list, we can be out again before the beast stops bellowing."

  "What makes you think he isn't home? His truck's there. And why would he leave the list?"

  "He left it the other night. And he'll be at work. Charlie told him if he took any more time off, he was through."

  "Why would he leave the truck and dog?"

  "She told him to lose the dog. She hates that dog. Maybe he had nowhere else to leave it but tied to the truck. He can walk to the job, it's only a few blocks. Look at the window, Joe. It's cracked open. What more do you want? It's a first-class invitation."

  Joe grinned. "Sometimes, Dulcie…"

  "It won't take a minute. Snatch up the list and out again, home in time for breakfast."

  He stood, studying the house, then took off running, a gray streak. They fled past the truck and the dog, straight for Stamps's open window.

  15

  The back lawn of the decrepit old house was brown and moth-eaten. Two dented garbage cans leaned against the step beside the sunken, unpainted picket fence. The cats, slipping along through the weeds beside the added-on wing, crouched below Stamps's window, then reared up to look.

  They could see no movement beyond the black screen and dirty glass, only the warped reflection of hills and trees. Leaping to the sill, they pressed their faces against the wire mesh, looking in.

  "No one," Joe said.

  "He can't be known for his housekeeping. What a mess."

  The bed was unmade, sheets drooping off a stained mattress. Stamps had left most of his clothes discarded in little piles across the floor. One could imagine him undressing at night dropping garments where he stood, stepping away from them. The open closet revealed only two hanging shirts and a lone shoe. A bath towel hung over the doorknob. The stink beneath the double-hung window was of stale cigarette smoke, dog, and Stamps's laundry. Probably Stamps had sneaked the dog inside when the landlord wasn't looking. The dog himself, behind them on the street, rattled and clanged and bellowed, his pea-sized brain fixated on dreams of cat flesh. The window screen was securely latched.
>
  Tensing her claws into little knives, Dulcie ripped down the screen, efficiently opening a twelve-inch gash. Joe pushed through the hole and shouldered the window higher, and they slipped through, leaping from the sill to the back of an upholstered chair. Its ragged, greasy cover smelled of hair oil. One could imagine him sitting there all evening, smoking and drinking beer among the heaps of clothes. Dulcie made a rude face, ears down, eyes crossed. "Can't he even drive to the laundromat?"

  An open bag of potato chips stood on the floor beside a muddy boot. Wrinkled jeans and T-shirts hung out of an open dresser drawer, and the top of the dresser was a tangle of junk. Joe, leaping up, met his reflection charging at him from within the dusty glass.

  The refuse dumped on the dresser must have come from Stamps's pockets, emptied out each night over a long period. He could envision the pile growing until it overwhelmed the dresser, cascaded to the floor, and eventually filled the room. He nosed among half-empty matchbooks, odd nails and screws, a broken pocketknife, dirty handkerchiefs, two crushed beer cans, a rusty hinge, bits of paper, a folding beer opener, a broken shoelace, and a scattering of coins. He pawed open each folded paper, but most were gas receipts, or store receipts, or hastily scribbled nearly illegible lists for hardware supplies and plumbing supplies. At the bottom of the pile lay several wrinkled fast-food bags and flattened, nearly empty packs of cigarettes.

  "Why would he leave the list in this mess? What's in the nightstand?"

  She stepped around a full ashtray wrinkling her nose. "Greasy baseball cap, a sock with a hole in it. Three candy bars, some half-empty cigarette packs, a paperback book with no cover. Lurid stuff. Just what you'd expect from Stamps."

  She jumped down to nose beneath the mattress. She was pawing the sheets away when Joe said softly, "Come look." He stood poised very still, staring at a wrinkled white paper. She leaped up beside him.

  Beneath the nails and coins, beneath the tangle of gas receipts and McDonald's bags and wadded paper napkins, lay Stamps's list. Joe smoothed the wrinkled paper and fold marks where he had pawed it open. They crouched side by side, reading Stamps's nearly illegible script.