Cat Under Fire

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Now from deep within, three figures moved, approaching the front, their progress broken into crooked shadows. They seemed to be the gallery's only occupants. Sicily floated theatrically toward the door, her loose, drifting garments almost ethereal beside the staid figures of the couple who accompanied her. The middle-aged man was nicely attired in a raw silk sport coat and pale slacks, the thin woman elegant in a sleek black cocktail suit, her shining black hair pinned into a chignon, her huge silver earrings dangling and flashing in the gleam of gallery lights. The three paused in the open doorway, stood discussing painting prices. The cats listened and watched narrowly, pretending to nap, but tensed for the moment when back would be turned, and they could dart inside. The couple seemed undeterred by the cash sums Sicily was mentioning, money enough to keep the entire cat population of Molena Point in gourmet abundance for the next century. One of the paintings they were discussing was Janet's, a canvas the cats could see inside on the gallery wall, a painting of dark, rainswept hills.

  But at last the man and woman stepped onto the street, and as Sicily turned back into the gallery the cats streaked through behind her. Racing for the shadows, they crouched between the zigzag walls. Looking out, they could just see Sicily as she moved away toward the back, unaware of intruders. Above them in the alcove hung a stark painting of a tilting San Francisco street, a work too austere for Dulcie's tastes, and seeming to Joe hard and ugly.

  And now, though Dulcie knew the gallery well, confusion touched her. As she peered away among the alcoves, searching for a better place to hide, she was riven with uncertainty. The gallery spaces seemed different tonight, the vibrant colors of the paintings seeming to shatter and converge in strange new convolutions beneath the dizzying lights.

  They heard Sicily pick up the phone and punch in a number, listened to her arrange late dinner reservations for four at the Windborne, Molena Point's most luxurious restaurant. This distracted Dulcie. She was able to calm herself with visions of a lovely, leisurely meal at a linen appointed table, waited on by liveried servers as she gazed down through the glass wall to the rolling sea below. Dreaming, she began to relax.

  And at last she licked her paw and smoothed her whiskers, preparing for the night's work.

  As they crouched in the shadows, Sicily returned to the front wearing a wrap, an African-looking shawl thrown over her shoulders, and jingling her keys. She swept past them, carrying a briefcase and a string handbag, pausing at the door to turn out the lights.

  The gallery dimmed to a soft glow from the streetlamps. Through the open door a cool breeze fingered in, then abated as Sicily pulled the door closed.

  She locked the door with her key and swept away down the street; in a moment they saw her white van go by, and realized they had passed it a block away.

  She was gone; the gallery was theirs. They came out from the shadows to prowl the pale recesses, studying each canvas, each glassed and matted watercolor, searching for Janet's work, but by the time they reached the back of the gallery they had found only five of her paintings. And none of these was new; Dulcie had seen them all in the gallery, long before the fire. In the dim light, the life and color of the work was nearly lost. Only the strong dark and light patterns remained, as if the paintings had turned into photographs of themselves.

  Deep in the interior, beyond Sicily's desk, four closed doors were half-hidden among the oblique walls. They pawed each open. One led to a rest room smelling powerfully of Pine Sol, one to a closet with a red sweater dangling among a row of empty hangers. The third door opened on a cleaning closet: broom, mop, various cleaning chemicals in assorted spray bottles. The fourth door, to the storeroom, was open, as if perhaps Sicily left it ajar for air circulation.

  And at the very back a fifth door, a broad, metal-sheathed loading door leading to the alley, was sealed by a bar and a padlock. Uneasily, Joe looked up at it.

  This door was impassable. And Sicily had locked the front door with a key. There was no other way out of the gallery. The realization that they were trapped made him feel as helpless as when, as a kitten, he'd been chased into San Francisco's dead-end alleys by packs of roaming dogs or by nasty little street boys.

  He shivered as they slipped into the storeroom. "You said there were no windows?"

  "None. If we can throw the light, it won't be seen. The switch is there…" She peered up, then pawed the door closed behind them, so light wouldn't be seen from the street.

  Joe paced, tightening muscles, staring up. He leaped.

  On his third try, scaling up the wall, his paw hit the switch. The lights blazed, three sets of long fluorescent bulbs burning in a white, blinding glow.

  Four rows of open racks marched away, bins made of slats to allow for air circulation, and filled with standing paintings. But Joe, shut in, felt his paws grow damp. His brain kept playing the same theme. No way out of the storeroom except this one door. No way to escape the gallery. And this storeroom was like a coffin. In his heart, he was four months old again, cowering away from attacking boys, clawing up restraining walls.

  He turned away, so Dulcie wouldn't see his fear.

  Hey, get a grip. This is not the behavior of a macho tomcat. But his paws were really sweaty, and he was beginning to pant.

  He got himself in hand sufficiently to move with Dulcie up one corridor and down the next, looking at each canvas, searching for Janet's work. They couldn't move the big canvases out of the racks, but each group of paintings leaned against a slatted divider. As Joe pulled a painting back, Dulcie could slip in between, take a look. Their paws were soon abraded, scraped nearly raw by the rough linen canvas and cut where the raw ends of picture wire had nicked them. They found only four of Janet's paintings, all without frames, the raw edges stapled. No thumbtacks. Two were of village streets done from some high vantage.

  "From the tower of the courthouse," Dulcie said. "That's Monte Verde Street below, those red blooming trees and the red roofs. And this other one, that's the Molena Point Inn. Look, she's put in a little cat asleep on the inn roof, a little black cat."

  She sighed. "You should come up the tower with me, it's lovely. Up the outside steps to the second-floor balcony, then along the open corridor and up into the tower."

  Her eyes glowed. "You can pull the tower door open, they don't lock it. Up the tower stairs to that open place near the top and there you are, a little jump up onto the stone rail, you can see all the town below, see the hills in one direction and the sea in the other. You can…"

  "Could we hurry this a bit?" Her description of those seductive open spaces wasn't helping; he hungered for space and air. "It's about time for the patrol."

  The Molena Point police not only conducted tight street patrols, but they carried passkeys to most of the shops. Joe had seen, as he prowled the night-dark rooftops, uniformed officers entering restaurants and galleries, perhaps because they heard some noise or saw an unfamiliar light. The department provided a high degree of security for the small village; you wouldn't find this kind of attention in San Francisco.

  When they found no more of Janet's work, when they had flipped off the light and fought the door open, Joe sat in the middle of the open gallery calming himself, getting himself together again; but only slowly did his heartbeat gear down. Beside him, Dulcie sat dejected. "I was so sure the paintings would be here."

  He washed diligently, soothing his tight muscles and shaky nerves, he'd never felt so edgy. The phrase nervous as a cat had taken on sudden new meaning. "Maybe they're in a warehouse, maybe one of those around the docks."

  "Possible. There are plenty of warehouses down there. Remember the fuss in the paper about turning them into restaurants and tourist shops? That's what defeated the last mayor. No one wants Molena Point to be so commercial." She rubbed her face against his shoulder. "Yes, we can go down to the wharves, take a look Sicily…"

  She stopped speaking, her eyes widening. "Or a storage locker." She stared at him, her eyes black as polished obsidian. "There are sto
rage lockers north of the village. Charlie keeps her tools and ladders there, all her repair and cleaning stuff. Wouldn't the paintings be safer in a locker than in a warehouse? And at two in the morning, would Sicily go down into that warehouse area alone?"

  "If Sicily has them."

  "If they're in a locker, there should be some kind of receipt. Charlie got a receipt for her locker. I saw it on her dresser, stuck into her checkbook."

  "You just happened to be passing."

  "Actually, I was looking at her art books. She doesn't care if I prowl."

  Trotting across the gallery, she leaped to Sicily's desk, began to nose through the papers in an in-box, then through a little basket containing a tangle of small, handwritten notes and postcards.

  She clawed open the file drawer. And as she searched, Joe prowled the perimeters of the gallery, nosing along the bay windows, hoping one would open.

  When he turned, all he could see of Dulcie were her hindquarters and tail as she peered down inside the files. "Look for a duplicate key, a spare for the front door."

  She raised her head, watching him. His kittenhood must have been terrible. He couldn't bear to be trapped though he would seldom talk about it.

  Sicily's files were filled with brochures and announcements of one-man exhibits, with newspaper clippings and reviews. Some contained, as well, glossy, full-color offprints of magazine articles featuring the artist's work. In the front of each file was clipped an inventory listing by title, the medium and size of each painting received by the gallery, the date received, the dates of exhibits entered, and whether the work was accepted or rejected. There were notations of awards won, and of reviews.

  The listing also contained the date a painting was sold, the price, and the name and address of the buyer. All the inventories were handwritten in small, neat script. There were three J folders.

  Janet's folder contained a list of her work taken by the gallery, but the dates were all months old. Two-thirds of the works had been sold. Dulcie could find no indication that a large number of paintings had suddenly been added to Sicily's inventory-unless the dates had been altered. And when she clawed open the smaller desk drawers she found only office supplies-a stapler, pens, blank labels, stationery, and envelopes- and in one drawer, beside boxes of paper clips, a tangle of bracelets and a lipstick.

  She was patting some restaurant receipts back into order when suddenly the burglar alarm screamed.

  She shot off the desk straight into Joe, the siren vibrating in waves, exploding, shaking them.

  Joe pushed her toward the back, into darkness away from the windows. Her fur felt straight out, her heart pounding.

  "They'll send a patrol car," he said. "I was looking for an escape route and I broke the beam." They stiffened as police sirens screamed up the street and Dulcie spun around toward the storeroom.

  "No," Joe hissed, "not there. There's not even a window. Come on-under the desk."

  "But…"

  Lights blazed in the street as a squad car slid to the curb. Its doors flew open. Two officers emerged, shining their lights in through the glass, and the cats shrank back beneath the desk. "Keep your face down," Dulcie whispered. "Your white markings are like neon. Hide your paws."

  Joe ducked his head over his paws, turning himself into a solid gray ball. From the alley behind the gallery, a second siren screamed.

  "If they see us," Dulcie said, "try to look cute."

  "You think this is a joke."

  "Relax. What can they do? If they shine their lights under here, roll over and smile. You're a gallery cat. Try to look the part."

  "Dulcie, those cops'll know Sicily doesn't have gallery cats. When they open the door, run for it."

  "How would they know she doesn't have cats? And what if they do? So they think we got shut in here accidentally. What else would they think? What are they going to do, arrest us?"

  "You left the desk drawer open."

  "Oh…" She tensed to leap up.

  He grabbed her, his teeth in the nape of her neck. "They'll see us."

  She shrugged, her dark eyes wide and amused. "What are you afraid of?" she said softly.

  He was ready to fight, to claw any hand that reached for them, but he was scared, too. "They'll think we're strays and call the pound." The pound had cages, locked cages. Having grown up in city alleys, he was far more aware of the terrors of the pound than was Dulcie. Far more wary of the powers of the police. Who could outfight a trained police officer? A cop knew all the tricks, knew to grab you by the tail and the back of the neck, putting you at an extreme disadvantage.

  Those two cops were going to get some heavy claws if they tried that trick.

  "They won't hurt us," she said gently. "We're not criminals, we're just little village cats."

  "Village cats don't get locked in the stores; they have better sense." He gave her a long look. "Get real, Dulcie. In here, we classify as a nuisance, and a nuisance goes to the pound. You think, at the pound, they allow you to call your attorney?"

  He didn't know what was wrong with him tonight; he was acting like a total wimp. Maybe he was sickening with something. He dug his claws into the carpet, watching the two officers let themselves in the front door, shivering as their spotlights swept the angled walls-and trying to talk sense to himself.

  So they see us. Dulcie's right, no big deal. We're not strays, we're respected village cats. People know us. Certainly most of the cops know us.

  And if some of the cops knew them too well, so what? Though he had to admit, Captain Harper had enough questions about them already without provoking him further.

  Harper was, in fact, too damn suspicious. And when Harper asked questions of Clyde, Clyde got upset. And Clyde lit into him.

  No, if we're going to snoop into police business, play PI and maybe step on a few police toes, then secrecy is our best weapon-our only weapon.

  The cops' lights glanced and paused, illuminating paintings, then running on across the zigzag walls, illuminating a sculpture stand holding a bronze head, flashing across a huge seascape, then onto the desk, blazing inches from their noses.

  19

  Spotlights hit the desk, focusing on the open drawer above Joe and Dulcie, and an officer approached. Black trouser legs and black shoes filled their vision. He smelled of shoe polish and gun oil, stood above them as if looking into the drawer and studying its contents. The cats barely breathed. But Dulcie's dark eyes were slitted with amusement. She had that devilish look, as if any second she'd trot out from under the desk and wind around the officer's ankles. Joe glared until she quit grinning and settled back into the blackness of the desk's cubbyhole.

  But at last the officer turned away, directing his beam on across the gallery, the officers' two lights washing away each shadow, illuminating each niche. And talk about a small world. Lieutenant Brennan and Officer Wendell had been present up at the car agency when Captain Harper found the counterfeit money. The cats, wandering among the officers' feet, had watched the result of their clandestine efforts with great satisfaction. Brennan was the hefty one. It was hard to tell whether his snug uniform concealed fat or muscle. Wendell was skinny, pale, his narrow face too serious. Joe could not remember ever seeing Wendell smile.

  As the officers moved toward the back of the gallery, throwing the desk into darkness, Dulcie shifted her position, easing her tension. At the back, the flashlight beams picked out, one by one, the storeroom door, the three closed doors, the loading door.

  But suddenly Brennan's beam swung around, returned to Janet's desk, and dropped beneath it. Hit them square in the face. They were pinned in the glare like moths against a window.

  Brennan's gun was drawn. When he saw them he lowered it, laughing. "Cats! Only a couple of cats."

  "Cats, for Christ sake," Wendell said. "Could cats trip the alarm?"

  "It's at floor level. Anything moving could trip it." Brennan approached the desk, but still scanning the room, keeping his back to the wall. He knelt, reached und
er. "Come on out, you two. Come on out of there." He reached for Joe, gentle but authoritative.

  Joe snarled.

  Brennan drew his hand back.

  "Okay, don't come out. How did you two get in here-you don't belong here. Sicily doesn't have cats." He rose. "We'll let them be, maybe they'll come out on their own." He started away, then looked back. "You better not have left a mess."

  The two officers checked the padlock on the loading door, opened each of the other doors, then moved into the storeroom. Switching on the lights, they covered each other as they searched the three narrow aisles. Only when they had cleared the premises, had found no human intruder and nothing else that seemed disturbed except for the open desk drawer, did they return to rout the cats. And, of course, the cats were gone.

  Crouched in a dark angle of wall near the front, Joe and Dulcie waited, hoping to escape, hoping one of the officers would open the door. But before they could streak away to freedom Brennan's roving light found them again. Joe snarled into the dazzle. Dulcie gave Brennan an innocent smile, her eyes wide and loving, and raised a soft paw, all sleepy-eyed sweetness. As Brennan knelt to pet her, only Joe saw, only another cat would detect deep within her green gaze, a wicked feline guile.

  Behind Brennan, Wendell frowned. "Could those be the two cats from Beckwhite's? The cats that were hanging around when we found the counterfeit bills?"

  "Looks like the same two. That gray one, that looks like Clyde Damen's cat."

  Wendell nodded. "Maybe they wandered in before Ms. Aronson locked up-or when someone else came in, or left. That stripy one, I've seen a cat like that over around the dress shops on Dolores."