2
C ORA LEE FRENCH heard the sirens shortly after midnight as she undressed in her upstairs bedroom. She had arrived home late from choir practice, driving slowly on the wet streets although the storm had almost passed. As she pulled into the drive, the house was dark above her, one of her housemates gone for the holidays, and Mavity most likely having read herself to sleep with a romance novel. Gabrielle was probably out on a date with Cora Lee’s cousin, and that made her smile, that Donnie had found someone to console him and ease his hurt. Gabrielle was good for him, and no one said you couldn’t have a hot romance at sixty-some. Whatever the outcome, Cora Lee was pleased that Gabrielle’s charm and attentions took Donnie’s mind off his loneliness, even if only for a little while.
Letting herself into the main house, she had turned on a lamp and gone upstairs to make sure young Lori was safe, in her third-floor room next to Cora Lee’s. Lori didn’t wake, but the two big dogs looked up at her-knowing the sound of her car, and her step, they hadn’t barked. She spoke softly to them, and they wagged and smiled and laid their heads down again. If she’d been an intruder, they would have raised all kinds of hell; the deep voices of the standard poodle and the Dalmatian, alone, would drive away a prowler, thundering barks that would be backed up with businesslike teeth and powerful lunges.
There weren’t many twelve-year-olds Cora Lee would leave alone for the evening, with only Mavity downstairs. But Lori had the dogs, and she was a resourceful kid, a child who would be quick to call 911 at anything unusual, and she knew how to use Cora Lee’s canister of pepper spray, too, if she needed more than canine protection.
Going back downstairs to the kitchen, Cora Lee saw that Gabrielle’s bedroom door was closed, so maybe her housemate was home after all. She fixed a mug of cocoa, and brought it upstairs with her, setting it on her nightstand beside her bed. The big white room was filled with the bright colors of her paintings and of the handwoven rugs she liked to collect, and the bright covers of a wall full of favorite books, among them many dog-eared picture books from her childhood. Cora Lee had never had children, but she treasured her own tender past. And now, of course, she had Lori, the kind of child who, though she was reading adult classics, was never too old for good picture books-she had Lori, she thought uneasily, until the child’s father got out of prison. Cora Lee dreaded that parting, and tried not to think about it.
Cora Lee was a tall woman, still slim for her sixty years, her black short hair turning to salt and pepper but her café au lait complexion still clear and smooth as a girl’s. As she undressed, slipping on a creamy fleece gown, she heard a rescue unit heading out from the fire station, and then the higher scream of police cars. She paused, listening, dismayed by the possibility of some disaster so near to Christmas.
This was a quiet village, where any ugliness seemed more shocking than in a large city, seemed far more startling than on the crowded streets of New Orleans ’s French Quarter, where she grew up. And now, during the gentle, homey aura of Christmas in the village, the prospect of violence was all the more upsetting.
The sirens whooped for some time, then the night was shockingly quiet. Before slipping into bed, Cora Lee removed Donnie’s three letters from the drawer of her nightstand and set them beside the cocoa. Because the sirens had unnerved her, she checked on Lori again, then moved down the hall to the high-raftered room filled with her paintings. Builder Ryan Flannery had added the tall studio, designing it in such a way that it lent a finishing charm to the flat roofs of the original house.
Looking out the bay window, down the hills toward Ocean Avenue, she could see the red lights flashing, and again she shivered-but maybe it would turn out to be a wreck with no injuries, or an overexcited call about a bear up a tree. That had happened one evening right in the middle of the village, a disoriented young bear with no territory of its own, wandering down from the open hills, lost and afraid.
Or maybe the sirens were responding to a false alarm, she thought hopefully. She wanted Christmas to be peaceful, wanted to see around her only renewal and joy. Saying a little silent Hail Mary in case someone out in the stormy night might be hurt, she returned to her room and slid into bed beneath her down comforter. But the violence of the sirens, though silenced now, echoed in her head for some time, mixed with the Christmas carols she had practiced earlier, sending a cold chill through her own soprano solos.
Propping three pillows behind her, she opened Donnie’s creased, linenlike pages that bore the logo of a Days Inn in Texas. And as she reread his letters, the sirens and the carols all vanished, and she felt again only his terror and the pain of his shocking loss in the hurricane.
Donnie’s letters said far more to her than Donnie himself had even told her, since his arrival a month ago, more than he wanted to talk about, and she understood that. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, his loneliness shone far more clearly in the letters he had written to her than he let anyone glimpse in his daily banter and quiet good cheer-perhaps this was why, though her cousin had been in the village for over a month, she still found herself returning to his written words to make real for her that shocking time-an entire population homeless; injured, sick, or dead; or escaping the city like rats from a doomed ship.
Donnie’s letters stirred too realistically the thunder of hurricane winds and the crashing of gigantic waves, the rending of collapsed levees and of twisted, falling buildings. It was all there in his careful handwriting, so vivid that it frightened her anew each time she read his words; but she was glad she had the letters when she saw how difficult it was for him to talk about that time-as if the gentle cousin who had come to spend Christmas with her could be known, truly, only by the anguish of his written words, never by the quiet and cheerful facade he so carefully nurtured for others to see.
Until three weeks ago, she hadn’t seen Donnie since they were young children. Since Donnie’s family left New Orleans for the coast of Arkansas, when she and Donnie were nine. To little kids who were best buddies, Arkansas had seemed continents away; and they hadn’t been in touch since. The ugly row had parted their families irrevocably.
Never borrow from relatives, the old adage went. But she and Donnie had been only children, they hadn’t been responsible or really understood about bankruptcy and inability to pay, and the resulting bitter feelings.
But now, in their sixties, suddenly Donnie had needed her again, had needed her badly enough to write his first letter to her in over fifty years. Had needed to reconnect with the only family he had left, after his children died in the flood, and with his wife already dead from cancer. Had needed to be with the only close blood relative he had left.
She could hardly bear to think about those three little children drowning before he could reach them, before he could race from the restaurant where he worked, through New Orleans ’s chaotic, flooding streets, battling the surging waters to the school that had been, he’d been promised by city authorities, completely floodproof and safe. He arrived as the building collapsed beneath pounding waves and surging debris, the top floor of the classroom imploding, drowning more than two dozen children-little children huddled in a refuge they’d been assured by grown-ups was secure against any storm.
Setting the letters aside, she snuggled down beneath the comforter, trying to dispel the coldness of spirit that filled her far deeper than the chill of the stormy night. Softly, she could hear the waves breaking on the shore, a strongly aggressive high tide, but not waves of hurricane force; not here on the Pacific.
Yet even as that thought comforted her, a sharper gust of wind and rain moved suddenly across the rooftops, rattling the widows.
But this was only a minor winter storm, nothing like the violence of an East Coast hurricane.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, she’d tried to reach Donnie, but she’d had no phone number or address. She’d tried through the rescue units, through the Red Cross and Salvation Army and the police, but had been unable to obtain any information. For over a year she
’d tried, and then this fall, when Donnie called her, the shock of that phone call had sent her heart pounding.
He had followed up with a letter, and then two more. And now here he was, under her own roof, and safe.
But, Cora Lee thought uneasily, life was never safe.
Nor was it meant to be. Anything could happen, any life could take a disastrous turn, just as any sea could turn violent. Even the tamer Pacific could flood the land, she supposed, under the right conditions. Listening to the heavy waves of the full tide, she wondered how far up the sand they were breaking tonight, and she imagined them lapping up onto the street, at the end of Ocean Avenue where the asphalt ended at the sand beach. But not here, she thought stubbornly, willing herself into a sense of security, yet at the same time wondering perversely if, in the distant future, the seas would indeed take back the West Coast.
That was the way the world worked, she thought sleepily, in gigantic cycles of change.
But that would be centuries from now, she thought as she dropped away into sleep; everything about the earth was ephemeral, each in its own time and cycle, nothing on this earth was meant to be forever.
Except, Cora Lee thought, our own spirits. Our spirits never die, they simply move on beyond the earth’s cycles, to a realm we can’t yet see. And in the deep, windy night Cora Lee slept.
3
T HE GRAY TOMCAT lay on his back, his four white paws in the air, his sleek silver body stretched out full length across the king-size bed, forcing his sleeping human housemate to the edge. Clyde Damen’s left arm hung over the side, his knuckles resting on the cold hardwood floor; all night Joe Grey had been nudging him away from the center; all night Clyde had unknowingly given, inch by inch, to the tomcat’s stubborn possession. Now, as Joe lay contentedly snoring, pressing his paw against Clyde ’s shoulder bidding for ever more space, suddenly he jerked wide-awake and flipped right side up, intently listening.
The sound was soft.
It came from the roof above. The rhythmic thumping of an animal racing across the shingles.
The next instant, the running paused. He heard a small window slide open just above him. Then the familiar flapping of his plastic cat door that led from his rooftop cat tower down through the ceiling onto a wide rafter in the next room of the master suite.
Whoever had entered was now inside the house. Cat or raccoon, poised on the rafter above Clyde ’s desk in the adjoining study.
No strange cat came into Joe’s personal territory without serious damage. A raccoon or possum entered only at risk of its life.
The flapping of the cat door slowed and stilled. Then a hard thump as the intruder dropped down from the rafter onto Clyde ’s desk. Joe crouched to leap, his gray fur bristling, crouched to do battle when he saw her…
Her yellow eyes were huge as she leaped from the desk, her dark, fluffy tail lashing and switching as she came racing into the bedroom and hit the bed leaping over Clyde wild with panic and fear, talking so fast that he could understand nothing. Before he could make sense of what she was trying to tell him, she was off the bed again in a froth of impatience and back onto the desk, where she hit the speaker button, shouting into the phone.
“A dead man, dead with a shot in his head in the plaza under the Christmas tree and a little child in his arms scared and crying. Hurry! Oh, hurry, Mabel, before the killer comes back! Tell them to hurry!” And even as Joe leaped to the desk beside her, hearing the dispatcher’s familiar voice, they heard the first siren leave Molena Point PD, and then the beeping of a rescue unit careening out of the fire station. Kit’s eyes were black with fear, she trembled against him crying, “The child, Joe. The little child…”
“Tell me on the way,” Joe said as he sailed to the rafter. Together they crowded out Joe’s cat door and through his tower to the roof-where Kit bolted away, Joe racing after her across the shingles, down to Clyde’s back patio wall and up again to the two-story wall that separated their patio from the shopping plaza.
When the plaza was originally planned, both Clyde and the tomcat had fumed because the wall proposed along their back property line would block their view of the green hills that rose to the east of the village and hide the sunrises they both enjoyed. Clyde had said the wall would destroy property values along the entire street, but that hadn’t happened.
With Ryan Flannery’s innovative design and construction, their scruffy backyard had been transformed into a handsome outdoor living area, a private retreat clearly defined and sheltered by the white plaster wall along which Joe and Kit now raced, at last dropping down onto a roof of the plaza shops. Kit never stopped talking, blurting out the details of the dead body in such a garble that Joe had a hard time making sense of what she was trying to tell him. For a moment he saw the plaza as it had been late that afternoon, hours earlier, when he and Kit and his tabby lady, Dulcie, had sat atop the wall watching the procession of white-robed carolers come up Ocean Avenue from the Community Church, gliding regally in their long robes to the little park across from the plaza. In the last rays of winter sun, they had stretched out on the roof tiles enjoying the Christmas carols, and the Christmas tree that rose beside them, its decorations a bright feast of color, the rocking horse and oversize toys richly painted. But now, just after midnight, the little park was dark and deserted, and the lights of the tree shone even brighter-though not as bright as the red strobe lights that pulsed atop the rescue vehicle that had backed in among the gardens, and the half-dozen squad cars parked at the entry to the plaza-and all across the shadowed gardens, uniformed cops moved fast, the beams from their flashlights swinging into shop entries and in through shop windows, picking out rich wares and searching the shadows within.
The ambulance stood with its back door open facing the Christmas tree. A stretcher stood on the sidewalk. Both were empty.
“So where’s the victim?” Joe said, studying Kit. “You said there was a body under the tree, and a clinging child.”
“It was there! And the child was there. Maybe in the ambulance?” Kit said hopefully, crouching to peer deeper in through the van’s open door.
“You can see there’s no body,” Joe said flatly, just the usual medical equipment, cots, oxygen tanks, who knew wat else? He looked at her patiently. Two medics stood beside the van with Dallas Garza as the detective spoke on his radio. As the cats drew closer, Garza clicked off and stood studying the green plastic cloth beneath the wooden toys where it was rumpled and awry, the toys knocked roughly aside. There was no body there and no child, and the tomcat looked at Kit with narrowed yellow eyes, his silver ears back, the white streak down his nose drawn into a harsh feline scowl.
“What the hell are you up to, Kit? You called them out here on a ruse? Some kind of…”
But the space beneath the tree was disturbed, and was splattered with blood; Joe could smell the blood, and he could smell death. And he said no more. They watched Dallas Garza study the short trail of blood, seeing where it led, and then look away at the plaza gardens, his dark eyes taking in the shadows beneath the small trees. Joe glared at Kit.
“There was a body, Joe! I swear! There was a child! A scared little girl with the dead man’s blood on her sweater! I suppose it was his blood,” she said. “Or was it the child’s blood? Oh, was the child hurt, too?” Crouching at the edge of the roof, Kit peered down into the windows of the squad cars, still looking for the victims. She could see no one, no glimpse of long black hair and dark eyes, no little white sweater. She looked at Joe forlornly. And even if his nose hadn’t told him, Joe would know she hadn’t made this up-Kit did not make up disasters.
“What will Garza do now?” Kit whispered. “Will they all go away, will they think it’s a hoax? But the blood…”
The paramedics had sat down on the back bumper of their vehicle, waiting for someone to come up with a victim. Detective Garza, stepping carefully around the tree, began to take photographs. Beyond the Christmas tree in the darker reaches of the plaza, officers continued to
search, and on the dark streets beyond the plaza, squad cars slipped along like silent, hunting hounds, their sudden spotlights sweeping into sheltered doorways and down narrow walkways-and before Joe could stop her, Kit leaped off the roof into a pine tree and down to the plaza gardens to disappear among the flowers and shadows in her own search for the frightened child.
T HE MOMENT THE running footsteps had ceased and the dark street had grown silent again, when he’d been able to see no one watching among the shadows, the killer had hurried around to the main street to the rental car parked in front of the plaza-if someone had seen the shooting, and had called the cops, he had only seconds to get the body out.
Backing quickly in over the curb between the plaza gardens, and stepping out, he’d seen that the kid was gone. That scared him. Where the hell? Well, he had no time to look for her, and anyway, she wouldn’t talk. He’d dragged the body up the walk and into the front seat, pushing it down partially under the dash, and at the last instant he’d grabbed the ragged cloth doll-it was obviously handmade, and might be traced, and he didn’t need that kind of evidence. Swinging into the driver’s seat, he’d sped away from Ocean heading for the nearest hiding place of the seven he’d pinpointed earlier, this one just two blocks away. All these residential streets were dark, no streetlights to deal with in this quaint little town. Pulling into the drive, he’d heard the first siren, and he’d backed the car around behind the row of tall bushes. The house was empty and dark, the part-time residents were in China for the holidays-he read the Molena Point Gazette religiously, at least the society column, to get a fix on the planned vacation schedules of the village’s well-to-do residents.
He’d thought of pulling the body out of the car and shoving and rolling it under the bushes, covering it as best he could with dry leaves and dead branches. The bushes were thick there, heavy with shadow. But then he’d changed his mind, in case he might have to move in a hurry-it would take a while to get the ID out of the car, remove the VIN number, and get the plates off.
Cat Deck the Halls Page 2
