Cat Deck the Halls

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  He hit the locked plywood cover, bouncing back, as off balance as a flailing cartoon cat.

  Clyde restrained a belly laugh. He had set the cover in place after Ryan and Rock left. He had, in fact, locked the dog door every night since old Rube died, since the black Lab was no longer sleeping right there, near the two-foot-high opening, to ward off potential burglars. Even Clyde himself, in an emergency, could squeeze through that dog door. Though it was unlikely an intruder would take the trouble to breach their patio walls, in these days of weird crimes, who knew what a thief might do.

  With Joe trapped unceremoniously in the kitchen, Clyde picked him up. Joe growled and bared his teeth. Clyde set him down on the table again, and held him by the nape of his neck in a way that enraged the tomcat.

  “Just listen, Joe. Just listen for one minute. Then, if you insist on heading for the Greenlaws’, okay.”

  Joe glanced toward the closed kitchen door. Clyde squeezed the fold of skin more firmly. “Harper’s up there. Lucinda was calling him when we left. By this time, he’s going through the apartment, maybe with Dallas, maybe the two of them already fingerprinting and taking photographs. Don’t you think it would seem strange if you came waltzing in, quite by accident, in the middle of the night? How many times in the past have you appeared precipitously at a crime scene and made Max Harper wonder? How many times has Dallas Garza looked at you strangely? How many times have those guys watched you so closely you began to squirm?”

  “Don’t squeeze so hard. That hurts!”

  “How many times, before even those hard-nosed cops are forced to guess the truth?” Clyde leaned down, his face inches from Joe’s face. “Max Harper isn’t stupid. Dallas Garza isn’t stupid. Neither would want to believe in talking cats. But you keep pushing it, Joe, and they may no longer be able to avoid the truth.”

  Joe sighed.

  “Do you really want to hasten the arrival of that cataclysmic day?”

  Joe just looked at him.

  “You don’t think Harper gets uneasy, with you three cats showing up every time they’re working a case? You don’t think he wonders about all the times evidence has appeared ‘mysteriously’ at the back door of the station? You don’t think he gets goose bumps every time an anonymous snitch calls in a new tip-and that tip brings in the goods? You don’t think that makes a cop edgy?”

  Clyde let go of his neck and propped a chair against the kitchen door. “Have you thought about would happen if Max Harper ever takes the time to really think about this! To put aside all his more immediate concerns, put aside his natural skepticism, and really examine this phenomenon?”

  “Of course I’ve thought about it. How could I not think about it? Don’t be such a nag!” Joe had thought about the matter more than he wanted to admit-and about the possible repercussions.

  From a purely selfish aspect, if he and Dulcie and Kit blew their cover with the law, life would change dramatically for them. But their human families would suffer far more. Clyde, Wilma, and the Greenlaws-and Charlie Harper, the chief’s own wife-would be the ones in the hot seat. Their silence would render them far more guilty, in Max’s eyes, than the cats themselves.

  There was no way, if Max ever did suspect the truth, that Charlie could convince him of her own ignorance. Not when, in her forthcoming book, both her drawings and her story revealed such a keen knowledge of feline nature that Max marveled at her perception, at her amazing intimacy with feline secrets. Max was already impressed to the point where he sometimes looked at Charlie in the same way that he studied the cats, puzzled and just a bit uncomfortable.

  The bottom line was, instead of heading for the Greenlaws’ and making Harper wonder, Joe padded docilely up the stairs beside Clyde and crawled into bed-making sure to hog both pillows. Drifting off, he thought he’d catch just a few winks and then, in the small hours after Harper had left the Greenlaws’, he’d slip on up there and get the scoop from Kit.

  Maybe they’d toss the downstairs rooms, too, to see what the law might have missed. Then they’d go get Dulcie, and hit the station-innocent, hungry, freeloading little cats. Get a look at Harper’s report and at the photos. And the tomcat fell asleep wondering about those pictures of the children.

  But when he was deep under, his dreams of the orphan children and the break-ins at the school and at the Greenlaws’, and of the body under the Christmas tree and that little girl huddled in the pump house all tangled together in confusion badly frightening him.

  He woke worn-out, hissing and angry. He felt better only when, trotting downstairs to the kitchen, he found Clyde in a cheerful mood again, an omelet already waiting for him on his side of the breakfast table and the morning paper opened neatly beside it. He did not, tucking in to his breakfast, question the change in Clyde ’s demeanor, from grouchy to sunny. Clyde seemed almost as if he’d settled some personal quandary, made some decision. But maybe it was only that he had finally decided, at the last minute, what to get Ryan for Christmas.

  16

  W HILE JOE GREY twitched through fitful dreams of threatened children and secret photographs and jimmied windows, the tortoiseshell kit took the investigation into her own paws. She woke several hours after Max Harper left her house. The sky outside the bedroom window was black. The lighted dial of the bedside clock said 5 A.M. The cold winter wind huffed at the windows, sending a chill over the top of the blankets. Lying tucked warmly between Pedric and Lucinda, she woke so filled with questions that she couldn’t help but wriggle and scratch at nonexistent fleas, was so fitful that after a few minutes Pedric turned over, irritably glaring at her, stared at the bedside clock, and glared again at Kit.

  Ashamed of waking him, Kit dropped off the bed and raced away through the house to the dining room. Leaping to the window and out her cat door, and across the oak branch to her tree house, she looked down to the rental house-not a sign of Christmas cheer down there, no bright tree or colored lights, though the other neighbors’ Christmas lights, even at this hour, were cheerily burning. No smells of Christmas from that rental, just the smell of mud and rotting leaves surrounding the old neglected dwelling, sad and depressing and somehow coldly foreboding.

  But someone was awake down there, already stirring. A light was on in the kitchen and she could see movement behind the shade.

  Twice last week she’d seen the woman leave very early. Now, backing down the thick oak trunk, dislodging bits of bark with her claws, she hit the ground running. It crossed her mind that she might be foolish to prowl there alone and try to get inside, among strangers, that she really should wait for Joe and Dulcie, for a little backup, an additional arsenal of tooth and claw.

  But Kit didn’t often heed the wiser choice, it wasn’t her nature to wait for the safer moment. Right now she felt far too impatient. Belting down the hill through the oak woods, she paused in their leafy shadows, her paws sinking deep in masses of wet leaves, looking up at the old, dusty windows.

  They were all closed and covered with cheap brown window shades hanging slightly askew. As she circled, looking up at the flaking tan walls and studying each window, her paws were soon soaking. If there had ever been a lawn, generations of leaves had long since eaten it away. All she needed was one window left open, and she could be up and through in an instant.

  She didn’t know, at this point, who was on the right side of the law, these three strangers or the woman who had spied on them. Or maybe they were all on the wrong side. Crooks against crooks?

  She ignored the fact that there had as yet been no crime committed by these three, that the only criminal act was that of the woman breaking into Kit’s own home. She ignored the possibility that the woman’s spying might be the result of a domestic crisis, perhaps a cheating husband, a situation in which the Molena Point police wouldn’t have the slightest interest unless it turned violent. At that moment, the tortoiseshell kit wanted only to know why that woman had been spying, to know what she found so compelling.

  There was no garden walk leadi
ng around the house, just the deep layer of wet oak leaves beneath the dripping trees. Soon not only her paws were soaked, but her legs and belly and tail, her long, fluffy fur sodden with icy water. Circling the house, she could see no windows open. The light had gone off in the kitchen; now that room, too, was dark. Three times she crouched to leap up to a first-floor windowsill, hoping to force an ancient lock, but each time, a frightened chill made her drop down again and sent her hurrying on around, not really knowing what had scared her.

  She could hear no movement within, but at the back of the house, when she paused beneath the higher windows of an upstairs bedroom, she could hear the soft, slow breathing of someone asleep; and at the next bedroom window she heard the same. Trotting around the far side and up onto the driveway, she left dark, wet paw prints on the pale concrete. The car that stood in the drive was cold and dripping with dew, its tires and wheels cold, the air around the hood reflecting back to her only the night’s chill. She wondered why they didn’t use the garage.

  How could it be full? It was a double garage, and she hadn’t noticed another car down here; and when they moved in she hadn’t seen very many boxes. That day, as the movers unloaded, as she and Lucinda watched through the dining-room window, Pedric had teased them about being nosy, and he had disdained to spy on the new neighbors-but later they saw him secretly looking, and they’d grinned at each other.

  The garage protruded out beyond the skinny front porch. Padding along beside it, Kit approached the three concrete steps leading up to the front door. Above her in the garage wall were three high little windows, so small they’d be a tight squeeze for a human. Might one of those have been left unlocked? But when she reared up to look closer, they appeared to be covered from the inside with plywood or cardboard.

  She considered the thin trellis beside the porch, where a dead vine clung. From its top rung she could easily leap to the first sill and try to get in. If that was only cardboard, wouldn’t it be taped or tacked to the window frame? If she could fight the window open, maybe the covering would go with it.

  Silently she padded across the porch between a dozen empty clay pots, some tilted over, spilling dried clods of earth and dried-up ferns, brown and brittle, maybe abandoned by some previous renter. Crouching, ready to leap and scale the trellis, she heard footsteps within the house and before she could run, the porch light blazed on and the front door flew open. Kit froze, hunched among the pots, hoping her dark mottled fur looked like just another dry fern.

  She could smell sleep on the woman who stepped out. A tall woman, her dark hair hanging lank and dry. She was fully dressed, but hurriedly so, her blouse only half buttoned over dark jeans, and over that, a heavy black peacoat. She didn’t notice Kit; she shut the door behind her and the lock clicked. But then, fumbling with her car keys, she glanced down-and caught her breath, staring straight at Kit, and backed away from her with a look of fear that quickly flared to anger.

  Phobic, Kit thought. I’m in luck, she’s scared of me, she…The woman dove at Kit, striking out at her. Kit yowled and clawed her hand, and ran; as she hit the drive she glanced back, ducked as a clay pot came flying. It crashed on the concrete inches from her, flinging shards in her face; she leaped away, terrified, through the deep leaves and up an oak tree, climbing and not stopping until she was so high among the tangled leaves that the woman couldn’t see her.

  There she crouched, shivering and licking sweat from her paws and wanting suddenly to be home, wanting to be held and comforted, wanting to be home with Lucinda and Pedric. She had done some wild break-and-enters, but never where someone threw things at her, threw great, hard pots at a poor little cat.

  If that pot had hit her, it could have done her in. She imagined her lifeless body sprawled on the drive as flat as highway kill, imagined her two old folks finding her there and kneeling over her, weeping. Imagined her little cat spirit wandering alone and lost in some mysterious otherworldly realm as she tried to find her way into cat heaven. And she wanted to be gently held and comforted.

  But she couldn’t go barging into the bedroom soaking wet and covered with rotting leaves, reduced to nothing but a heap of trembling fear. Nor did she want to explain to Lucinda and Pedric where she’d been, after they’d warned her not to go snooping around that place.

  No one had ever thrown things at her like a stray mutt, not since she was a starving kitten and a man in an alley had thrown a shoe at her. That had frightened her very much, had enraged and shamed her because she was so small and alone that she could not fight back.

  That shame filled her now, and she was not ready to go home.

  Leaping through the oak branches to the next tree and the next, she headed away across the roofs for Dulcie’s house. Dulcie would understand. Both Dulcie and Wilma might scold her for being reckless, but she would not be embarrassed to confess to them, as she would with Lucinda and Pedric. Through the dark predawn she ran, the sky above her streaking with paler gray, the sea wind fingering cold into her wet fur.

  Wilma’s garden flowers were wet, too, when she plowed through; she was soaked when she plunged in through Dulcie’s cat door, the plastic flap slapping her backside like a powerful hand chastising her.

  She stood in Wilma’s kitchen dripping onto the blue linoleum, sniffing the lingering scents of crème brûlé and chowder from last night, of Dulcie’s late-evening snack that Wilma had brought home, and of the Christmas tree from the living room. And the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, too, which she followed through the familiar house; crossing the dining room toward the hall and Wilma’s bedroom, she paused, dripping water on the Oriental rug, to look in at the Christmas tree; it shone bright and festive with its white and silver and red decorations gleaming among the deep green needles. She looked with interest at the richly wrapped gifts, then moved on, following the smell of fresh coffee.

  Dulcie’s housemate so loved coffee in bed that when she woke up she would pad barefoot out to the kitchen, switch on the coffeepot, wait patiently in the cold dark dawn, then carry a full mug back to bed, where she’d tuck up again beneath the warm, flowered quilt. Kit found her so now, sitting up in bed cradling a steaming mug, a warm fire lit in the woodstove, and Dulcie curled by her side looking up sleepily as Kit entered.

  “What?” Wilma said, putting out her hand, seeing clearly Kit’s distress; and Dulcie leaped down to sniff her face and her wet fur.

  “Where have you been?” Dulcie said. “Oh, what happened?”

  “Come up, Kit,” Wilma said, patting the covers. “Come up and get warm, I don’t care if you’re wet.”

  Leaping up onto the quilt, Kit snuggled down between them. She was silent for a long time, getting warm, licking at her wet fur, and wondering where to begin. She remained silent until Wilma lifted her chin and looked into her face.

  “What, Kit? What upset you?”

  Sensibly, Kit started from the beginning, from the moment last night when she’d left Dulcie and Joe on the roof of the Patio Café. Carefully she told everything that had happened since, every little detail. If she didn’t tell it all, Clyde or the Greenlaws would-and if Kit told it first, she could tell it her way.

  17

  A S WILMA GETZ sipped her coffee in bed, and Kit snuggled down between her and Dulcie telling all about the Greenlaws’ break-in, up in the hills at the Harper ranch, Charlie Harper hurried to do her morning chores, feeding the horses and dogs, turning them out into the pasture and cleaning the stalls. The sky was barely light, the time not quite seven. Max had left for the station some time ago, warmed by a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes and thick sliced bacon. Charlie, seeing him off, had stood in the stable yard watching his truck move away up their long, gravel road, worrying because he never got enough sleep. At the far end of the road, as he turned onto the highway, Max had blinked his lights once and then he was gone over the rise, heading down to the village.

  He’d been up late the night before with the Greenlaw break-in, and the night before that he’d gotten to
bed later still because of the missing body. Max wasn’t the kind of chief to stay in bed and leave his men to do all the legwork; but it was hard sometimes to rein herself in and not fuss at him that he needed rest.

  Last night’s late rain had left the ranch yard muddy and squishing under her boots. As she entered the barn, dawn was beginning to brighten the sky. The air was as cold and fresh as springwater. Soon, as the sun rose, the pasture grass would gleam emerald bright-this time of year the four horses were wild to get out of their stalls, hungry to get at the new sweet grass. Besides Max’s big buckskin gelding and her own sorrel mare, they were boarding the kids’ horses now, a dun mustang that young Dillon Thurwell’s parents had bought for her, and a small, borrowed mare called Parsnip, named for her color, who had been a fine teaching pony for younger Lori Reed.

  Lori was experienced enough now for a bigger and more challenging mount, but she so loved Parsnip that Max and Charlie had hesitated to return the little mare to her owners. As Charlie fed the horses and the two big dogs and then turned them all out to the pasture, her thoughts moved from the disappearing body to the Greenlaws’ mysterious intruder, her head filled with a tangle of questions. The department would come up with the answers, given time-but how much time was there for that scared little girl?

  And was there a connection between the child and the break-in at the Patty Rose Home? It seemed to Charlie there had to be, if someone was secretly taking pictures of the orphan children.