Cat Coming Home

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Max Harper had done three interviews for the Gazette, urging people to take certain precautions to avoid a forced break-in. But not every villager paid attention to precautions, thinking, “That won’t happen to me.” In too many households, that seemed to be the operable response. Folks depended on MPPD to protect them, and gave little thought to how they might protect themselves. So many humans, Joe thought, seemed to have forgotten the principles of self-preservation, relying on others for their security—like pampered housecats who, never having learned to hunt, lay around the house waiting for someone to open the cat food. In Joe’s case, the fact that he might yowl at Ryan to serve up the spaghetti or make him an omelet didn’t mean he couldn’t trot on out to the hills and catch his own supper, when he chose to do so.

  At the poker table, Ryan was saying, “Maudie worries me, up there alone with that little boy. I don’t know what it is about her …” Letting the thought drift, she picked up her cards as Dallas dealt, and then looked across at Max. “L.A. still has no lead on the shooter?”

  “None.” Max frowned. “What is it? What’s bothering you?”

  “I don’t know, something about the way Maudie … When we talked about the shooting, I got the feeling she was holding back. I don’t know what it is, maybe just one of those feelings. Probably means nothing.”

  But Joe Grey, watching his housemate, knew exactly the sense of wrongness that bothered Ryan. There was something about Maudie, a shadow behind the scenes, visible only in a certain light.

  Max glanced at his cards, realized it was his bet, and slid a dollar to the center of the table. “Maudie was the only witness to the shooting,” he said, “and she swears she couldn’t identify the shooter. The sheriff thinks the three children told the truth, that they saw nothing. Pearl Toola was the only suspect they had. She stayed in L.A. long enough to cooperate in the investigation, then got permission to move down to San Diego. She gave L.A. the address and phone number of a friend there, I guess she didn’t think they’d check.

  “She never showed up at that address,” he continued. “L.A. had no further information on her. Because of their heavy workload and no other leads, they put out an APB on her and temporarily shelved the case.”

  Dallas dealt the last card of seven-card stud and raised a quarter. Joe was always amused at the high stakes of these friendly games. If a person came out five dollars the winner, that was a big victory, enough to gloat about for days.

  Max said, “There’s always the chance the shooter will show up here. I’ve talked with Maudie, suggested she needs to be careful, to report anything that seems strange.”

  Ryan looked at him, started to speak, then went silent. So, Joe thought, she hadn’t told him about the truck—but maybe she would soon if Maudie didn’t. Behind them, over in the corner, Rock woke. Lying on his back, he huffed once, staring upside down at the too-noisy humans. Wilma was shuffling the cards when the phone rang.

  Ryan rose to answer, listened for a minute, then, “Hang on, I can’t hear with everyone talking.” Glancing across at Wilma and laying down the phone, she headed for the guest room. “Will you hang up for me?” she said, pushing back a lock of stray hair.

  Wilma rose quickly at their little private signal. And Joe Grey dropped to the floor. Whatever the call was about, it surely involved Dulcie—or the call was from Dulcie, and that would have to be an emergency. Yawning, trying to look casual, he followed Ryan into the guest room where he could listen as she took the call on the extension.

  18

  THE DAMEN GUEST room had once been the master bedroom when the house was a small, one-story cottage. The new second floor with its sprawling master suite included Clyde’s office and now a studio-office for Ryan as well; and this downstairs room had been completely changed into a charming guest retreat. The faded and anonymous bachelor furnishings that had suited Clyde and Joe had gone to Goodwill. They had been replaced by wicker and leather furniture and bright, primitive rugs, a far more elegant treatment than Clyde had ever wanted for himself. Slipping in behind Ryan, Joe leaped to the wicker desk where she sat talking softly on the phone.

  Putting her arm around him, she drew him close so he could listen. Sitting tall beside her, his ear to the phone, the tomcat tried not to tickle her face with his whiskers. The voice at the other end was Lucinda Greenlaw. “No, Kit’s not home yet,” she was saying worriedly. “We haven’t seen her since early this morning, she’s been gone all day. Is Joe home? Is Dulcie? Kit’s nearly always home for supper, she’s been coming home so regularly, until tonight.”

  Snuggled next to Ryan, Joe could see down the hall if anyone left the poker table and headed their way; he could see the corner of the kitchen, where the wall phone hung. He watched Wilma step to the extension and pick up. She listened for a moment, then hung up and headed for the guest room. As Wilma joined them, Ryan turned, shielding the sight of Joe from the kitchen, and held the headpiece at an angle so both Joe and Wilma could hear, and so they could speak with Lucinda. The banter out at the poker table was more than enough to hide the tomcat’s husky voice.

  “Kit was with us,” Joe told Lucinda softly. “Maudie Toola went to her sister’s for dinner, that’s where we were. Not to worry,” he said, “we all left together. Maybe she stopped on the roofs to chase bats. She’ll be along soon,” he said reassuringly. “If she’s not home in half an hour, call back and I’ll go look for her.”

  He turned away from the phone wondering why Kit had to be so damned flighty. He hadn’t wanted Lucinda to worry, hadn’t told her how wired Kit was when they parted, going off by herself stubbornly lashing her tail when Joe and Dulcie headed for home. He was thinking that yellow tomcat had set her off when Wilma said, “If she isn’t home, maybe she and Dulcie are together, maybe Kit’s at my house.”

  Joe hissed gently at Wilma. Just let it be, he thought. Kit might be foolish enough to race after a strange tomcat, but Dulcie wouldn’t. And what was the fuss about? He and Dulcie and Kit roamed the village at all hours; he’d thought their human families had gotten past this unnecessary worry. Tonight, everyone seemed on edge, too quick to react. That was okay for the law, but it was a different matter for the cats’ human housemates.

  Lucinda said she felt better after talking with Joe, and she ended the call. Hanging up the phone, Wilma gave Joe a hard look. “It doesn’t get any easier, worrying about you three.” Picking up the phone again, she dialed her own number and waited for the machine to kick in. “If you’re home,” she said, not mentioning Dulcie’s name on the tape, “please pick up. It’s important.” They didn’t use names over the phone, they kept matters as vague as they could, in case they were ever overheard by the wrong party, or someone else played the tape. She was about to hang up when a small female voice said, “I’m here.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” Dulcie said. “Just finishing up the shrimp casserole, and about to start on the custard. Lovely,” she said, purring into the phone in an excess of carelessness.

  “I’ll be home soon,” Wilma told her, and quickly she hung up. “I didn’t tell her that Kit wasn’t home, she’d go out looking, and …”

  “I’ll go,” Joe said, and at Ryan’s worried frown, “Go on back to the poker table, before your luck changes.”

  Ryan reached to stroke him, trying to look unconcerned about Kit. She’d lived with the tomcat only since February, when she and Clyde were married. She’d known the truth about Joe’s extraordinary skills only since Christmas, and she still worried about him, she worried about all three of these special cats with their unsettling talents and their foolhardy forays into human affairs. Three little sleuths out on the streets trying to right the wrongs of the world. If she thought too much about their clandestine activities, she was left with a frightened, sinking feeling in her stomach.

  Clyde said it took a person with imagination and courage to accept and to live equitably with a speaking cat. He said a rigid, inflexible mind couldn’t wrap itself ar
ound the concept, that rigid thinking didn’t allow for the wonders that might exist in the world like half-seen shadows around them. As Ryan and Wilma returned to the kitchen, Joe raced for the stairs, meaning to hit the roofs to look for Kit—he paused when he heard Max’s cell phone emit its rattlesnake buzz. One of the department’s computer gurus had, just recently, changed the signal for Max, and the sound still unnerved the tomcat. When Max said, “Garza’s on his way,” Joe waited, peering into the kitchen, listening.

  “Put the additional patrols on the street,” Max said, “and call Detective Ray.” The chief looked across at Dallas, who had risen and was pulling on his jacket.

  “Two restaurants,” Max said. “Blue Bistro and the Flying Galleon. They broke out the front window of the Bistro. A pedestrian saw two dark-clad figures running away, saw no moving car.”

  Dallas nodded, and he and the two uniforms were out the door. Joe heard the Blazer and the squad car peel away and swing a fast turn up at the corner, their tires squealing. Joe was tempted to race out and follow them across the rooftops, but he was more inclined to wait for what might follow—maybe Max would take another call. Though the odds were long against such prompt discovery of an accompanying invasion, nevertheless Joe waited, as tense as the chief himself.

  So far, all seven invasions had followed this diversionary MO. After the first two forced entries, each preceded by downtown break-ins to distract the police, Max’s contingency plan had gone into place. Pulling officers from their homes and beds at the first report of a midtown burglary, they hit the residential streets, doubling neighborhood patrol, watching for any suspicious activity, waiting for the report of a break-in. The village might be only a mile square, but the neighborhoods were dense, the streets crooked and narrow among the wooded hills, the cottages close together, and some of them tucked behind others so they were nearly invisible from the street. And in the questionable interest of “atmosphere,” as the city council called it, Molena Point had no streetlights. At night, the crowded residential areas were as dark as the inside of a sealed rat hole, inviting all manner of mischief.

  The chief paced, tense and irritable, and in the hall, Joe fidgeted, both the chief and the tomcat willing the inevitable invasion call to come through, though the odds were indeed against such a quick cry for help. It took time for these lone women, who were tied up or beaten, to summon assistance. In all the previous cases, their phone lines had been cut or the phones removed. At one house, the detached phones were found buried in the outdoor garbage can. Now, Max was too impatient to stay in the house. He was headed out the door when the snake rattled again. Max picked up, listened.

  “On my way,” he said. He nodded to Ryan, planted a kiss on Charlie’s forehead, and was gone. Even as his pickup peeled away, Joe vanished up the stairs, leaped to Clyde’s desk, from desk to the heavy beam, out his cat door, through his tower, and out its open window, his paws pounding shingles as he followed the sound of Harper’s pickup.

  19

  THIS INVASION WAS as carefully planned as the others, but this one took just the two of them before joining the others to break up a couple of downtown restaurants. This lone woman was elderly and wasn’t close with her neighbors, wouldn’t have neighbors checking on her. All the hours they’d watched the place, they’d seen no neighborly visiting back and forth. Only one car in her garage, jammed in among boxes and trash, and there was never a second car in the drive, never any visitors. That first rush was the best, when they forced their way inside—when they rang the bell and the dumb broad opened right up to them. That first rush of the attack, slamming the door open in her face hard enough to knock her down. They’d kicked her a couple of times to keep her quiet and then trampled over her into the house.

  They cased these places carefully before they went in, always knew if the mark was alone, always a different neighborhood, one poor, the next one well-to-do, it didn’t matter, and always a different time of night or day. Not all the marks lived alone, but each was alone at the time they rang the bell. They’d watched this house all afternoon, watched her pull her car out of the garage, one of them pretending to jog the neighborhood while the other parked out of sight. If they were doing this for the money gained by what they walked away with, it would be a washout, they’d be earning pennies an hour. But they were paid in other ways.

  When she left, they’d followed her, driving real slow like she did. Big outing for the old girl, seven blocks to the local grocery. Followed her inside, walked the aisles as she did, making sure she wasn’t buying more than usual, wasn’t in fact expecting guests.

  But she’d been shopping for only one: a quarter pound of hamburger, a small head of lettuce, one tomato. Pitiful, a lone woman, timid and careful in her ways—and stupid enough to open the door in the near dark, to a stranger. You had to laugh, people so trusting they’d let anyone in. Didn’t they read the papers? What did they think would happen, what did they expect? Standing over the cowering woman, they’d laughed at her and eased the door closed behind them, shutting out any view from the street. Though it didn’t matter much, the entrance really couldn’t be seen, the way the house was positioned and the door sheltered by those trellises hung heavy with some flowering vine, thick, dark leaves sprawling up the walls—another example of how foolish people were, inviting anyone to stand hidden in the shadows.

  The woman was scared silly even before they gagged her, too scared to do more than croak out a whisper. She lay huddled on the wrinkled-up rug, her hands over her bleeding face, terrified they’d kick her again, begging them not to hurt her anymore. They liked that, they were in control. They took turns, one trashing the house, breaking dishes and furniture and little figurines, while the other fondled and teased her until she was white and shaking, terrified they’d rape her.

  Of course they never did, Arlie didn’t want that complication. Didn’t want any shooting or rape, with the DNA evidence. Didn’t want the heavier sentence in case something went wrong—not that it would, not with him running things, Arlie was a master of deception.

  They never bothered to steal much, only enough to make it look like a burglary. These diversions had nothing to do with selling stolen goods, that wasn’t the intent. Arlie paid his people well enough, and he was, as he put it, in it himself for another kind of payback.

  More likely, if he told the truth—which Arlie was never famous for—he was in it for what others paid him, which might be considerable. He’d never talk about that, he’d just say, “For the payback,” and smile in that way that made a person’s spine crawl and leave it to your own imagination: the scenario wasn’t hard to figure out, though he’d never admit to doing this stuff for hire.

  When they’d left this mark there in her trashed house, the way they’d gagged and tied her, it would take her a long time to call for help, would be hours before she could manage to reach the phone. And then when she did, she’d find it dead, the line to the wall cut and useless. There was an extension in the bedroom, but it would take her a while to make it up the stairs and get it plugged back in. That was fine, they didn’t want her not to call. The whole point was for her frantic call to the cops to be too late, the damage already done, her attackers long gone, the ensuing publicity enough to keep the village on edge until the next invasion.

  After they tied her up, they’d touched base with Arlie there on the street and then headed into the center of the village, taking their time, at last joining the others to trash the two restaurants. What a ball, broken glass, broken furniture everywhere. By the time the cops swarmed in they’d been well away from the shattered windows and trashed interiors; they’d watched from some distance, hidden among the shadows as the black-and-whites came scorching in, their sirens screaming, red lights spinning—only then, still laughing, had they gotten the hell out of there. And the cops had no notion that elsewhere in the village, another invasion had come down. That call shouldn’t come in for hours, maybe not until morning.

  20

 
EVEN AFTER THE two darkly dressed figures had left, Nannette Garver couldn’t cry out for help. The gag in her injured mouth was so tight it sent pain through her whole face and throat. She felt as if she were suffocating. Her jaw hurt so bad where they’d kicked her, she thought it might be broken. She lay on the living room floor, her legs bent double and bound up to her waist with heavy rope, her hands tied behind her. One big upholstered chair was overturned, her two small side chairs broken almost to kindling. Books had been pulled from the shelves, pages torn out in handfuls. The little porcelain figurines that she so loved, the little rabbits and running children, all were broken into jagged shards.

  She didn’t think she could stand the pain of the gag much longer. But of course she had no choice. The phone lay across the room, where they’d knocked it off the little writing desk. When she tried to roll to it, she was jerked back—was tethered, like a tied-up dog, to the leg of the heavy armoire. She tried gingerly to pull it along with her, afraid it would fall on top of her. But it was too heavy to move at all, with the big old TV inside. She wondered if, with the receiver off the phone, that would alert 911.

  But she knew better. She’d taken the receiver off many times when she didn’t want to be bothered with phone calls from salesmen or annoying pollsters. If you took the headset off, the canned voice would come on for a while, then the beeping would start, would go on and on until eventually blessed silence fell. Now she didn’t bless the promise of silence, but prayed someone was at the other end, someone to help her.