“He’s happy—he loves obeying my orders,” Joe told her smugly. A less intelligent dog might have problems with a speaking cat giving him obedience commands, but Rock had learned early on to accept Joe’s strangeness with good will. The big Weimaraner, at first shocked and then curious when the gray cat spoke to him, had come to respect the tomcat’s talents, though still he liked to tease Joe, with a keen, doggy humor.
“As to the kippers, you know I need my protein,” Joe said, greedily eyeing the browning pancakes and stifling a yawn.
Ryan turned to look at him. “What you need is sleep. I heard you slide open your tower window, coming home. It was after three this morning.” Carefully she laid the delicate, salty fishes on his warm pancakes and set his plate on the table.
Leaping to his place mat, Joe tucked into his breakfast, thinking about his phone call to Max last night, wondering what Max would do with the information, with Joe’s suggestion that the blonde in the motel could be Maudie’s ex-daughter-in-law. The link between Pearl and the Colletto brothers left Joe edgy with unanswered questions, scattered information yet to be sorted out. He’d nearly finished his pancakes and kippers when he heard the morning paper hit the front door. Heard Clyde’s feet, coming down the stairs, make a detour out the front to pick up the daily rag. Sounded like he was wearing his heavy boots; that meant a workday at the cottage. He clumped into the kitchen dressed in ragged jeans and a khaki work shirt, sat down at the table generously laying the paper between them so Joe, too, could scan the front page.
LONE WOMAN AT THE MERCY OF UNKNOWN CRIMINALS
When Nannette Garver answered her doorbell yesterday evening the door was shoved in her face, knocking her down. Two men gagged and beat her, robbed her, broke and destroyed everything in her house. There were no police patrols on the street to deter such a crime and Nannette lay tied up for many hours before she was found and released. It is troubling indeed to realize how at the mercy of unknown criminals a lone woman is in our village, without the police protection our taxes pay for …
Stifling a rude comment, the tomcat licked his plate clean. Only then did he finish reading the vitriolic article, his ears flattened with rage. “They call this journalism? This garbage? I don’t even want to see the editorial page.”
“This is an editorial,” Clyde said with equal disgust, and turned to the actual editorial page at the back, where Nancyanne Prewitt’s inaccurate interpretation of last night’s events occupied two additional columns. Crowded together, Clyde and Joe read with irritated grumbles. Ryan put Clyde’s plate down on the table beside the Gazette, scanned the article, but made no comment. She sat down at her own place, trying to ignore the smell of kippers, and quietly ate her breakfast, choosing not to comment on the Gazette’s vitriol. Talking cats reading the local paper, punctuating the silence with angry comments, was still a bit much, first thing in the morning, she was still trying to get used to these changes in her life. She looked up at a knock from the front door and Charlie’s voice through the new electronic speaker, and rose to let her in.
After the third home invasion, Ryan had installed a simple intercom for the front door in the interests of security and peace of mind. No more leaving the door on the latch for drop-ins. Charlie followed her on back, sat down at the table between Ryan’s place and Joe, and accepted a cup of coffee. She was dressed in jeans and boots, a leather jacket over her sweatshirt, her red hair tangled from the morning wind. She barely glanced at the paper.
Clyde said, “You’ve read it?”
She nodded.
“Has Max seen it?”
Again, a nod. “At least the reporter didn’t have access to the holdbacks.”
“What holdbacks?” Clyde asked.
Joe said, “There were two cars parked near the scene. A black Cadillac and an old, junky pickup.”
All three looked at Joe. Clyde said, “Did you see the drivers?”
“I didn’t, Kit did. She called it in. A black-haired, middle-aged man was driving the Cadillac. Black shirt, short black beard neatly clipped. The other two were tall, darkly dressed. We think one was a woman; she showed up later at the Kestrel Inn, a blonde.” He told them what they’d seen at the motel, the couple switching the cars under the tarp. He left out the part about the yellow tomcat. “By the time I called the department and got back to the motel, Dallas was there and both cars were gone. He got a nice plaster cast of a partial tread mark; we’ll see where that leads.”
“A cast complete with gray cat hairs,” Charlie said dryly.
Joe felt his breakfast turn sour.
“Not to worry,” Charlie said, stroking him. “I told Max I’ve seen a gray and white cat around that motel, that I thought she lived there, or nearby.” Motel cats were common in the village. Often guests inquired, when making reservations, if there was an in-house cat, and then upon arrival they would seek out the little four-legged PR executive for a pet and a cuddle. Some guests liked to share supper in their rooms with the resident cat. If the manager knew them from past visits, this was often allowed, and a special meal was served for the feline host or hostess.
“So what else do they have?” Clyde said. “One tire cast, with cat hairs. Fingerprints? Footprints?”
“They have footprints,” Charlie said. “Max didn’t go into a lot of detail, he only got a couple of hours’ sleep. He was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that I have to think this is coming together. He mentioned something about a connection to someone in Soledad, someone with ties to the village or to some parolee.”
“If there’s a parolee mixed in,” Clyde said, “maybe his parole officer will come up with some information.”
Ryan shrugged. “Probation and parole is stretched pretty thin. State parole is running caseloads of three to four hundred.” Ryan’s dad had recently retired as chief of the federal probation office in San Francisco, and she’d followed with interest the increasing strains on the various state and federal departments.
Clyde glanced again at the front page. “What about the two restaurant break-ins? Anything there?”
“Same as the others,” Charlie said with disgust. “Lots of damage, not much taken. Obviously diversionary, but a terrible thing for the owners.”
Ryan finished her pancakes and reached for the front page. She glanced at the first few lines, about the invasion, scowled at the tone of the article, folded the paper, and laid it facedown on the table. “Street patrol should have been right there on the spot. Oh, right. Should have been sitting right there waiting for someone to come along and break the door in.” She looked at Joe. “I’m with you, I don’t want to even see what Nancyanne Prewitt has to say. One good thing,” she said, “the thicker these new people at the Gazette lay it on, the less likely people are to buy their garbage.”
“I hope,” Charlie said. She reached to scratch Joe’s ears. “The information you cats picked up last night—the descriptions, the tire track, the motel … that’s a huge help. Between you cats and the department,” she said, stroking his back, “you’ll get these SOBs sorted out.”
Joe seldom heard Charlie swear. But then, it wasn’t every day someone came after Max like this—and Joe had no doubt that was the scenario. He just hoped she was right, and that the case would be resolved before anything worse happened.
Joe wasn’t sure why he hadn’t mentioned the yellow tomcat, why he hadn’t shared with them this strange cat’s part in last night’s surveillance. Maybe, he thought ashamedly, he wanted all the glory for himself, and for Dulcie and Kit? Or maybe it was because he knew no more about the yellow cat than he did about the invaders, didn’t have a clue what the cat really wanted or why he was here in the village. Until he had a handle on that, maybe he didn’t want to get into a long and pointless discussion.
Ryan said, “This Arlie Risso? This newcomer in the village who’s been complaining about the invasions?”
Charlie nodded. “I’ve heard the name.”
“He moved here about a month ago,”
Ryan said. “I think he bought a house; he was in Haller’s Building Supply a couple of days ago when I picked up a lumber order, he was buying some replacement hardware. He’s been here less than a month, he said. He was complaining loudly about the invasions, going on to George Haller. When I heard him bitching, I moved away among the aisles where I could listen. He said he meant to be at the city council meeting, see what excuse the police have for ‘this rash of crimes,’ as he calls it.” She looked at Joe. “Black hair, neat little black beard. Well built, maybe in his sixties. Sounds like he’s going to raise hell at the meeting.”
“We’ll be there,” Clyde said with interest.
Charlie said, “Not me, I don’t want it to look as if the chief needs his wife for backup. But I’d sure like to be a fly on the wall.”
“The meeting is when?” Joe said in an offhand manner.
They all looked at him. Clyde said, “No way,” and helped himself to the last pancake.
“Why shouldn’t he go?” Ryan said. “He goes everywhere else.”
Clyde scowled at her. “Have you ever been to a council meeting?”
Ryan shook her head.
“The room’s too open, there’s nowhere for a cat to hide. Space under the pews is open, and only a bare wall at the back. I can just see the mayor dragging Joe out by his furry neck.”
“You don’t have to be so graphic,” Joe snapped. Though he knew the room didn’t lend itself well to feline surveillance. He thought about the windowsills, but those skinny strips were way too narrow even for a cat to cling to. He could perch on a branch outside with his ear to the glass, except that the meetings started at four-thirty, and it would still be light out. He’d be seen from within like one of those paper cutout cats decorating grade-school windows for Halloween. He was wondering how to bring this off when Ryan caught his eye as she reached for the bacon, gave him a quick look of complicity.
Joe licked a last smear of kippers from his whiskers, hiding a smile, and before the discussion could go further he dropped to the floor and headed for the living room and his well-clawed easy chair. Ryan would smuggle him in, and not by his furry neck. Yawning, Joe curled up on the ragged chair, thankful once again that Clyde had married a woman of such keen imagination and sly complicity, a woman more than willing to bend the rules for a deserving accomplice.
31
IT WAS LATER that morning that Joe dropped to the roof of Ryan and Clyde’s little cottage amid the drumbeat of hammering from the yard below—and landed facing the yellow tomcat. They hissed at each other and bristled, but without much ferocity, only with the usual rush of tomcat one-upmanship, that sudden and heady surge of adrenaline that made the yellow cat lash his tail and give Joe a ritual snarl. Below them, Ryan and Clyde were building wooden forms, getting ready to pour the foundation for the new sunroom. When Joe padded around onto the small wing that extended behind the cottage, he could see that they had the big header in for the glass sliders. A roll of heavy plastic lay nearby, ready to cover the new opening against unexpected gusts of passing rain. He didn’t see the two Latino laborers; he thought they were working another job, preparing for yet another remodel. Ryan was right, this would be a busy month for her, the joys of the holidays sandwiched in between bouts of heavy labor; and that was the way she liked it. She never complained, so Joe guessed the construction work must be for Ryan as heady as restoring rusty old cars was for Clyde or, for Joe, offering up to MPPD a nice piece of evidence to fit into their investigation.
When he looked over at Kit and Dulcie, he had to laugh at the feathers stuck to Kit’s mottled face where she’d just finished off an unwary starling. Beside him, the yellow cat had relaxed his wary stance, and the four of them lounged companionably, watching Clyde drive stakes for the forms. They watched Lori Reed came out the side door, hauling pieces of carpet taller than she was. Dragging her burden into the narrow side yard, she heaved the heavy bundles into a green metal Dumpster that seemed nearly as big as the house. Her brown hair was tucked up under a baseball cap. She wore shorts, boots, a faded T-shirt, leather work gloves, and a cloth mask tied over her nose and mouth against the dust from the ancient rug.
“Her pa’s going back to prison tomorrow,” Dulcie said softly as Joe rolled over, close beside her. “To the prison infirmary.” Her fur, baked from the sun, smelled clean and sweet. Over the noise of the hammers, the three talked in little cat whispers. “That’s a visiting day,” Dulcie said. “Lori and Cora Lee will leave at midnight tonight, to be in line in the morning.”
The yellow tom flicked an ear. “A long wait for tired families, wives and kids in line for hours, and then only a few short minutes for their visit. And a long wait, too,” he said dryly, “for the prisoners’ scuzzy partners, on the outside, to pass on their coded information. Their plans for whatever’s coming down out here, beyond the prison walls.”
From within the house, Benny appeared, also wearing a mask. He went straight to Rock, to lean companionably against the patient Weimaraner. Lori, having apparently hauled out the last of the carpet, went to kneel beside them, putting her arm around Benny. “You can help me sweep, if you like. There are two brooms.” Looking pleased, Benny nodded and rose, and the two disappeared inside again. In a moment the cats could hear their brooms swishing across the bare wood subfloor. Joe looked at the yellow tomcat.
“There was a man in prison,” Joe said. “Kit said his name was Arlie something? What did he look like?”
“He’s been out a couple of months,” Misto said. “A handsome man, maybe in his fifties, close as I could tell. Square build, very white hair. Clean shaven, soft-spoken, and—urbane is the word. The others laughed at him, called him ‘the gentleman.’ But not to his face; he could be mean, you could see the rage surge up in him. They didn’t mess with Arlie, even the prison gangs left him alone.”
“And the man you were watching in the motel,” Joe said, “could he be the same?”
Misto flicked his whiskers. “His hair was black, and a black beard. I couldn’t pick up his scent, nothing but shaving lotion, and her perfume. He’s built the same, voice the same. Not hard to grow a beard, then dye his hair and beard.”
“Did you follow him here,” Dulcie said. “Is that why you came?”
The yellow cat smiled. “Not exactly. It’s what he said that brought me here. Arlie and Tommie McCord talked about the village. Prison talk, McCord going on about the burglaries he’d pulled here. And Arlie describing the fine house he’d once owned on the shore when he lived here. Bragging talk. But I thought I’d seen that house, a vague memory of concrete slabs with glass in between. ‘Modern,’ he called it. The memory of that house was like a dream, I didn’t know then where I’d seen it.
“He talked about beautiful women sunbathing on the beach, and then about cats, said there were too many cats on the shore around his house, cats hiding in caves in the cliffs. Said they were disgusting, that the village should get rid of them. That had McCord listening, all right, and laughing, a strange, mean laugh. But it sounded so like the muddy shore I remembered, that house, and the shore where the sea will come up to cover all the sand, and there’s a little fishing dock. When he told about a man who came to feed the cats, that was a jolt. I was sure I remembered him.” Misto looked at them with excitement. “I was a kitten in that place, I’m sure of it. I think I was born there.”
“That could be Dr. Firetti,” Dulcie said. “The man who fed the cats, he’s fed them for years. He’s our doctor. He feeds the strays and traps and, pardon the expression, neuters them, gives them their shots and turns them loose again.”
“He didn’t neuter me,” Misto said. “He couldn’t trap me. I remember the traps, like wire cages. When he set them, I always hid from him. I was only small when a woman began to feed me, she came every day until we were friends. And then she took me away; I made my home with her until she died. She died very young, she was fine one day, and then an ambulance was there, it took her away and I never saw her again. And t
hen I was on my own,” Misto said sadly.
“And you came here because you remembered this village, and because those prisoners talked about us,” Kit said, her ears sharply forward.
Misto’s ears and whiskers were down, his thin tail curled around him. “It’s hard to get old among strangers. Hard, when there’s no one else like you, no other speaking cat, no one who understands.”
“And your family?” Dulcie said. The hammering below and the scurries of wind among the dry oaks masked their whispers.
“My mate and I were happy, we had three fine, half-grown kits when she disappeared. I searched for her for a year, I found tufts of her fur near some spent bullets. If she was dead, I never found her body, and at last I gave up.
“I raised the kits, they were good hunters. But then in a garden near our den they took up with a family of children, and all three decided to stay. I didn’t want another human family, I wasn’t done roaming. They were grown and on their own, and I left them.”
“You’ve traveled all over?” Joe said, wondering how that would be, to live that vagabond life.
“I traveled for months, but then returned there, I was lonely for my young ones. But they were gone, the family was gone. I looked for a long time but I never found them. At last I moved on again, and I kept moving, always traveling. I didn’t find my children, and I met no more of our own kind.”
Misto looked from one to the other. “Do you know how it feels to think you’re the only cat within hundreds of miles like you, the only cat who can understand human speech, who could speak to a person if you chose?”
They all three knew how that felt, they knew that frightened loneliness. That was how Dulcie and Joe had met, when each thought there was no other cat like them. They remembered well the wild thrill, when they discovered each other.
Only Kit had never experienced that particular kind of loneliness, for she had grown up among a band of speaking cats. Kit knew loneliness of a different kind, shunned by the others like herself, an orphaned kitten, an outsider, tagging along behind a feral band that didn’t want her, eating the few scraps they left, trying not to starve. She wasn’t born of their group, she was a speaking cat but she wasn’t one of them, and she was driven off again and again, a little kitten who did indeed understand loneliness.
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