Cat Deck the Halls

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Holding Kit close, Lucinda smiled shyly at Ryan. “I guess cats are more complicated than people imagine. They’re strange little beings, and often, when they think there’s a need, they’re very creative little souls.”

  “She was creative tonight,” Ryan said with admiration.

  Kit purred for Ryan, watching her with interest. Ryan Flannery, Kit thought generously, had simply never been around cats. Ryan had never, she decided smugly, had the opportunity to deal with the amazing feline mystique.

  Behind Ryan, Clyde and Pedric were looking exceedingly uneasy. Lucinda, not wanting Ryan to become too interested in the abilities of certain cats, said almost cloyingly, “She sure did hear something, poor little thing. But to be fair, maybe she wasn’t warning me at all. Maybe she ran to me for protection. I think,” she said, “that we often misread our animals.”

  “Maybe,” Ryan said doubtfully-she might not know cats, but she knew animal body language, and Kit’s behavior had been a sharp warning, not a panicky bid for help.

  In the dark and empty family room, Pedric switched on the lights and he and Clyde examined the windows, quickly finding the jimmied panel. Moving on down the hall, they turned on the lights in each empty room. Ryan and Lucinda followed them, Lucinda still cuddling Kit-they found nothing until they reached the back bedroom.

  There, in the far corner, propped against the wall, stood a black canvas backpack. There were marks on the windowsill near it, where the thin coat of dust had been disturbed, as if something small had lain there. And Ryan found, half hidden behind one closed venetian blind, an empty film cartridge, carelessly abandoned or forgotten.

  Using a tissue, she picked up the little plastic cylinder, wrapped it, and tucked it in her pocket. “Thirty-five-millimeter. Strange thing for a burglar to leave in a house. Unless…” She looked at Pedric. “Did you have a camera down here? Any camera equipment?”

  “Nothing,” Pedric said. “There was nothing at all to take, these rooms were all just as you see them, bare as old bones.” Taking a clean linen handkerchief from his pocket, he covered his hand, knelt a bit stiffly, and opened the backpack. Touching the items within as little as possible, he lifted them out one by one and lined them up on the floor. Binoculars. A thin plastic grocery bag that contained candy bars and a dry cheese sandwich, two unopened boxes of film, and an expensive-looking camera with a telephoto lens.

  Clyde and Ryan moved to the window together, looking away down the hill between the Greenlaws’ oak trees to where the next house loomed, surrounded by woods. Three windows were faintly lighted behind drawn shades.

  “Not much to take pictures of,” Ryan said.

  “That’s a rental,” Lucinda said. “New neighbors, they just moved in.”

  Pedric was examining the film. He handed it to Clyde. “Regular thirty-five-millimeter. Fast, four hundred speed.”

  Behind Ryan, Lucinda looked down at Kit, questioning. The tortoiseshell, forced to remain silent, twitched her ears and flicked her tail in a clear gesture: I don’t know any more than you do, Lucinda! Kit had hardly noticed the new neighbors, and that embarrassed her. She was supposed to be the spy in the family, and now she knew no more about those tenants than she knew about the black-clad, sour-faced woman who had invaded their home. All this going on unheeded, right in plain sight, right under her supposedly sleuthing paws.

  “I remember,” Clyde said, “seeing a moving truck over there, a week or two ago.”

  “Two men and a woman,” Lucinda said. “A big woman, tall, not fat. Sturdy-looking. Shoulder-length dark hair. There wasn’t much in the moving truck that I could see, some cardboard boxes, only a few pieces of furniture, old and tacky. I think that house rented furnished.”

  Ryan cut a look at her, and laughed, and Lucinda grinned at her. “Nosy neighbor-nosy old woman.”

  “Not old. And not nosy,” Ryan said, putting her arm around Lucinda. “Just observant. But I couldn’t resist.” They stood a moment, Lucinda counting back the days.

  “It was about a week before they moved in that I saw a Pine Tree Rental Agency car over there, saw an agent go in and out a couple of times.”

  Outside, the wind was coming stronger, rattling the old windows and driving the scent of rain in around the glass. Again Pedric examined the marks on the sill. “Looks like she balanced the camera here. What’s so important that she would break in, with the purpose of taking pictures of that house or of its occupants?”

  Clyde said, “You haven’t met the neighbors, don’t know anything about them?”

  Pedric shook his head.

  Ryan, kneeling over the camera, studied its cumbersome telephoto attachment, then carefully searched the nearly empty backpack, slipping her tissue-covered hand into its inner pockets.

  The last pocket yielded a large manila envelope and a smaller yellow envelope that bore the Kodak emblem, the kind one would pick up at the drugstore photo counter. She glanced into the brown envelope, then slid both inside her jacket. “Let’s get out of here. We can look at these upstairs, and call the department.” Replacing the camera and binoculars and plastic bag in the backpack, Ryan did not see Lucinda’s look of hesitation at the mention of calling the dispatcher.

  They took the backpack with them. They left the jimmied front window ajar, as they’d found it, and locked the sliding doors behind them. Lucinda carried Kit, talking softly to her, though Kit wasn’t free to answer.

  “You scared that woman bad,” Lucinda said, stroking Kit. “I wish I could make you understand how wonderful you were.”

  Kit purred and snuggled against her.

  “When you leaped and screamed like that, you very likely saved me from a far more violent attack, Kit.” Lucinda scratched Kit’s ears. “You’re way smarter than any watchdog, my dear!” Lucinda gave her a wink that no one saw, and Kit didn’t dare even smile. She hid her face against Lucinda’s shoulder to keep from giggling. Clyde cut them a half-warning and half-amused look, and turned away. Pedric had moved on ahead; if he was smiling, no one saw. Everyone but Ryan knew the truth about Kit, it was only Ryan Flannery who didn’t have a clue.

  Kit wouldn’t mind Ryan knowing her secret-hers and Joe’s and Dulcie’s secret. Ryan was a good person, and certainly the cats trusted her. But so many people knew already that it really wasn’t smart to tell anyone else. Despite the best intentions, important secrets had a way of escaping as quickly as mice slipping from a cracked barrel.

  Charlie had figured it out, as had Lucinda and Pedric. As had more than one of the criminals who the cats had helped send to prison-and that was more than enough people knowing. Ryan, being Detective Garza’s niece, might find it very hard indeed not to let their secret slip-look how hard it was for Charlie.

  Kit knew, too well, that Charlie was sometimes sorry she knew. Such knowledge had to be awkward for a police chief’s wife, when the cats in question were the chief’s prime informants-and when they spent so much time on Max Harper’s desk pretending to be simple little freeloaders. The worst of it was, the cats had no idea how long they could keep up their charade before even that hard-nosed cop guessed the truth.

  Everyone moved upstairs into the big, raftered living room, and Lucinda lit a fire and turned on the Christmas-tree lights. The house smelled of ginger and vanilla and that sweetly scorched smell of cookies that had browned around the edges. While Clyde and Pedric walked through the rooms to be sure the woman hadn’t gotten in there, too, Ryan, sitting down at the dining table, put on a pair of Lucinda’s cotton gloves and shook out the contents of the two envelopes. Lucinda fetched her own take-out container of shrimp bisque and warmed it, and set Kit’s late-supper snack on the dining-room windowsill. Kit, wolfing down her good supper, watched Ryan examine the photos from the yellow Kodak folder.

  “A roll of twelve,” Ryan said, “processed through the Village Drugstore.” She shook her head. “Under the name Jane Jones.” She looked up at Lucinda. “Are you going to call the station?”

  “I’d like
to wait a bit. Let’s have a look at these, first. The woman’s long gone, by now.”

  Ryan looked at her, frowning, but said nothing. Lucinda sat down beside the younger woman, studying the individual photos as Ryan laid them out. All twelve shots were of the neighbor’s house, all with the same distorted perspective produced by the telephoto lens, the house and figures sharp enough, but the trees in the foreground looking flat and out of focus. Two pictures showed a man inside at a window. Three showed a woman at another window. Six showed two different men outside the house, two of those with the woman as well. The last shot was of a car coming down the drive, the woman at the wheel. When Clyde and Pedric joined them, Pedric picked up Kit from the windowsill and held her in his arms as he sat down so she could see better. It was the nine-by-twelve pages from the larger envelope that made them all uneasy.

  Ryan lined them up. Each sheet of slick white paper was printed with four color photographs. The twenty pictures were all of a different location. Lucinda’s hand trembled as she reached out for the nearest page. Ryan stopped her, taking her hand, and offered the older woman the package of cotton gloves.

  “Those are pictures of the Patty Rose Home,” Lucinda said, pulling on the gloves, so upset she’d forgotten about fingerprints. She brought the sheet closer. “What does she want with pictures of the Anna Stanhope estate-pictures of the children?” And already, within herself, Lucinda feared the answer.

  Two of the twenty pictures were of the Stanhope mansion with its appealing Tudor design, its dark timbers incising their strong patterns across the pale plaster walls. Three pictures were of different angles of the artist’s small home and studio, a simple stone building constructed in the early part of the previous century. The other fifteen photos showed the buildings at more distance, with the children in the foreground running and playing in the tree-shaded garden and on the playground. Five of those were close-ups of individual little girls, all distorted by the telephoto lens, which flattened the perspective and made the pictures seem even more immediate and threatening. All five little girls had pale skin and black hair, and it was this detail that brought Kit sharply alert and made her shiver. All five little girls resembled, in coloring, the child she’d seen huddled against the dead man.

  “Max needs to see these,” Ryan said. “Now, tonight. And you need to report the break-in to him, before that woman comes back.”

  Lucinda looked at her uncertainly.

  “When she finds the pictures and camera missing,” Ryan said, “she’ll do one of two things. Either she’ll run, or she’ll come up here to take these back. Possibly take them back, armed.”

  “I…If she were armed,” Lucinda said, “she would have drawn on us downstairs.”

  “You don’t know that. We don’t know what she’ll do. She might have a gun hidden somewhere else, in a car maybe. Bring it back with her.” Ryan looked hard at her. “Call the station, Lucinda. Or I will.” And she glanced through to the kitchen, to the phone that stood on the counter.

  Pedric put his arm around Lucinda. “Ryan’s right.”

  Lucinda nodded, rose, and headed reluctantly for the phone. Kit watched her, puzzled, and didn’t understand what held Lucinda back. This was not like her. As Lucinda talked with the dispatcher, Ryan looked at Clyde. He was scowling, and silent.

  “What?” she said, laying her hand over his.

  He shrugged. “I guess…Just that we don’t need this stuff at Christmas.”

  But Clyde was thinking far more: Joe Grey and Dulcie and Kit were already in stalking mode, drawn into last night’s murder. And whatever the cats were into made huge waves in the lives of their three families and Charlie. Now here was another involvement, which, no matter how valuable the cats’ contribution might turn out to be, would keep their human friends totally uptight for the rest of the Christmas season, keep everyone on edge waiting for unseen complications-or for disaster. Would increase everyone’s stress level at a time that should be restful, restorative, and filled only with Christmas joy.

  For some reason, Clyde thought, laughing at himself, he had innocently imagined a quiet Christmas this year. Lowkey suppers and relaxed parties with close friends. He and Ryan snuggled before the fire on Christmas Eve sipping eggnog and opening small, personal gifts while the tomcat dozed idly beside the hearth, content with the season and with his own Christmas eggnog.

  Well, hell, Clyde thought. Living with Joe Grey, he should know that kind of holiday was not to be.

  But then, when he glanced at the kit, expecting to see the wild flame of challenge that crime always generated blazing in her yellow eyes, he saw, instead, only a puzzled frown. Kit’s full and suspicious attention was keenly on Lucinda. And when Clyde looked into the kitchen where Lucinda was talking with the dispatcher at Molena Point PD, it was Lucinda’s eyes that burned with challenge-Lucinda Greenlaw looked as excited, and as sly and secretive, as the tortoiseshell kit ever had.

  15

  J OE GREY DIDN’T learn about the Greenlaws’ intruder until Clyde got home late that night. When Clyde ’s car pulled in, the tomcat was asleep in his tower, among the cushions, lying on his back with his four paws in the air. The reflection of moving car lights flashing across the tower’s conical ceiling woke him. He blinked and flipped over among the pillows, his nose to the glass, looking down to the drive to make sure that it was really Clyde pulling in.

  Joe’s private, cat-size tower, rising four feet above the roof of the second floor, with its unique hexagonal shape and operable, full-length windows, was a masterpiece of luxury and, Dulcie said, ostentation. Joe disagreed about that-the tower was, in his mind, simply a utilitarian source of comfort, unimpeded view, weather control, and fast and easy access to the rooftops. To hell with ostentation.

  As he listened to the purr of Clyde ’s antique roadster, wild barking erupted from the back patio, where Ryan’s big Weimaraner had spent the evening. Joe rose and stretched, then lay down again, listening as Clyde and Ryan let Rock in the house, laughing and greeting him. He listened to kitchen noises as they made coffee and fixed a snack, and soon the smell of coffee rose up to him. Outside his tower, the night wind increased, fitfully shaking the glass and hustling the oaks and pines against the shingles, and smelling sharply of rain. He didn’t head downstairs-as lonely as he felt at that moment and as fond as he was of Ryan, he could not talk in front of her. If he went down, as out of sorts as he was, the enforced silence would leave him even more irritable.

  He’d gone to sleep thinking about the little frightened child, so alone and terrified at Christmastime. He’d chided himself for growing sentimental, but he’d waked hurting for her, and badly needing company. Now, irritated by his own shaky and sentimental mood, he wondered if he was sickening for something.

  He listened to the buzz of conversation from below, waiting and dozing until he heard Ryan’s truck pull away and he could go on down and talk freely. Could dump some of his misery on Clyde.

  Slipping quickly through his cat door onto the rafter above Clyde ’s desk, he dropped down onto a mess of paperwork, most likely orders for engine parts, and then to the floor. He was crouched to race downstairs when he heard Clyde slamming things into the refrigerator and rattling ice: quick, angry noises that clearly telegraphed a fight, or at best a lovers’ quarrel. Oh, hell. Not a fight with Ryan, not at Christmas! The two seldom argued, even mildly, though they unmercifully teased each other. Trotting reluctantly down the stairs, knowing that Clyde might need a sympathetic friend, too, he pushed in through the kitchen door, leaped to the table, and silently watched his housemate irritably mixing a bourbon and water.

  Clyde turned, his scowl deep, his dark eyes worried. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Milk and gingerbread?” Joe asked meekly.

  “I suppose you want it warmed!”

  “Yes, please.” Joe studied his housemate’s dark scowl as Clyde poured a bowl of milk, broke a thick slice of gingerbread into it, and put the bowl in the microwave. In a mo
ment Clyde set the warm bowl, and his own drink, on the table. The tomcat looked sternly at him. “You and Ryan had a fight?”

  “We didn’t fight. We were having a discussion. We had a very nice evening. I don’t need you to spoil it.”

  “Then why all the slamming around? Why the scowl?” Joe’s yellow eyes burned at Clyde. “What happened up at the Greenlaws’?”

  Clyde glared, and didn’t answer.

  “What?” Joe said.

  “Just for tonight, Joe, could you just eat and come to bed, like a normal, ordinary house cat?”

  “What? What happened, up there?”

  Wind buffeted the kitchen windows, then eased off. From the living room the fresh pine scent of the Christmas tree drifted through the house, mingling with the smell of the gingerbread that Clyde had made as part of an early dinner before he and Ryan headed for the ballet.

  Ordinarily, Clyde would have taken Ryan out to dinner, but neither one had been in the mood for the incredibly crowded restaurants on a theater night. Instead, he’d fixed a simple supper that they’d eaten in the living room before the fire, enjoying the Christmas tree that they’d decorated together. I am, Clyde thought, amused, getting to be a regular homebody.

  This Christmas, in fact, he found himself entertaining thoughts of marriage; the theme played so repeatedly that he was glad the gray tomcat couldn’t read his mind. Joe couldn’t keep one damned opinion to himself, he’d have way too much to say on the matter.

  “So, what happened?” Joe said, patiently licking milk from his whiskers.

  Clyde sighed. He really had no choice. The damned cat would just keep on pushing, as nosy as a case-hardened cop. No one who’d ever lived with Joe Grey, when the tomcat felt left out of the loop, would deliberately withhold information and incur his verbal abuse, as sharp as his threatening claws.

  Refreshing his drink, then settling again at the kitchen table, reluctantly Clyde filled Joe in on the Greenlaws’ female intruder, the backpack and camera, and the two envelopes of pictures. He’d barely finished when Joe’s ears twitched toward the living room, and he crouched ready to spring away through his cat door. Clyde rose fast, shut the kitchen door, and stood in front of it. Like a flash Joe leaped for the big doggy door that led out to the back patio, not looking carefully in his haste.