Cat Deck the Halls

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Nothing had changed in Patty’s office. Dorothy liked it just as Patty had designed it, the wicker-and-silk sofa, the big leather chair facing the desk, the hand-carved desk and bookshelves that had been made by a Mexican craftsman Patty had known during her Hollywood days. The carved screen behind the desk that, Charlie knew from talking with Joe Grey, concealed a wall safe where each day’s receipts were held.

  “Ryan and I have an appointment with the mayor at three,” Dorothy said. “His secretary said he was at a meeting up the coast. I think that was an excuse, to give him time to talk with the building inspector and get their ducks lined up. Against us, of course. I did my best to-”

  There was a knock at the door, and a tall young waiter wheeled in a cart bearing two covered plates of the inn’s famous shrimp melt, a pot of hot tea, and a selection of small, rich desserts. Reaching deftly past Charlie, he pulled out the sliding tray at the back of the desk and set her place with a linen mat and napkin and heavy silver flatware, then he set Dorothy’s place on her side of the desk. Charlie found it interesting to see Dorothy in this new light, all spiffed up and so businesslike, and yet so comfortable in her new role. Patty had trained her protégée well.

  When the waiter had gone, Dorothy said, “Even though Max has more men patrolling, I’m hiring more guards. I find it incredible that someone, planning to abduct a child, would have the nerve to come here in daylight and take pictures. Incredible that none of us saw him, that none of the children did.” She shivered. “But those telephoto shots of our little girls. You can tell just about where the photographer stood, behind the cypress trees across the street. Max said that Dallas photographed the area and made casts of some shoe prints.” She looked at Charlie. “Does everyone get this much attention? Is it because we’re friends? Or because this involves children?”

  “It’s the children,” Charlie said. “The whole department is on the watch, they hate this kind of predator. I wish…This is just so sick. And now, at Christmastime, when little kids should be happy…When innocence should be a good thing, and not a safety problem.”

  “We try our best to keep the kids informed, but not to scare them unduly. The little ones are tender, and kids dramatize everything. But they have to be alert, Charlie. We’ve stressed that they’re better equipped than most children, if they use common sense and stay together. We have to trust what we’ve taught them. We’re hoping, too, that the excitement of the Christmas pageant and the playhouse contest will give them a heightened sense of community, of being together.”

  Dorothy was quiet for a moment; then, “It’s less than a year since Patty’s vindictive murder, and I keep wondering if someone wants to take out that same hatred on the school…”

  They had all been at the theater that night, at a retrospective of Patty Rose’s old movies. It was the one night that Patty herself hadn’t attended. They returned from the theater to find her dead, lying in blood on the exterior stairs that led down to the parking garage. It was Kit who had found her. It was the kit who, all alone, had tracked and found her killer-and had subsequently been locked in the house with him, trapped and terrified.

  Charlie finished her lemon tart and sipped her tea, puzzling over her feeling of almost knowing something, something she wasn’t seeing. She looked at Dorothy. “This is such a strange set of events. I keep wondering, Are we all missing something? Something right in front of us, that we all should recognize? Something I can’t bring clear.”

  Dorothy thought about that. “Did your cleaning girls mention anything unusual, when they were up here?” Ever since Dorothy lost three of her cleaning staff, in September, Charlie’s crew had done most of the work while Dorothy interviewed for new hires.

  “That’s been a week ago,” Charlie said. “They cleaned up here the end of last week. Mavity didn’t mention anything, but I’ll ask.”

  “They came back yesterday. I thought you’d changed the schedule. I’d just pulled in through the gate when I saw the van pull away from the curb, down by the studio. I wondered why they didn’t park on the grounds as they usually do.”

  Charlie frowned, puzzled. Maybe Mavity’s crew had cleaned one of their accounts near the school, though she didn’t remember anyone up there changing their standing appointments. And why would Mavity park down at the end of the school?

  Charlie seldom went out on the work crews anymore, but she kept the schedules, paid the girls’ salaries and benefits, and handled the paperwork. Her cleaning teams were booked months in advance, and she could use more help, but it was hard to find competent new hires. Dorothy was proof of that, as hard a time as she was having finding acceptable people.

  “I thought I saw one of the school’s old cleaning women in the village, a few days ago,” Dorothy said. “She drove off before I could hail her. I wish she’d come back-though I wasn’t sure it was the same woman. Her hair was black instead of mouse brown. Same tall, awkward look. She was a good worker. A rather sour sort, but she didn’t mind heavy, dirty work. She did most of the cleanup when we bought the old studio, got rid of some trash and an invasion of mice. Good thing the paintings had all been moved out, long before. Those mice would have done hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.”

  They parted after their delicious lunch, and Charlie, walking back through the village to her car, thought about the old stone studio. It was easy to imagine the lovely isolation Anna Stanhope had enjoyed, living and working in that charming retreat.

  She had to wonder about Anna’s studio appearing, at different angles, in the background of several of the intruder’s telephoto copies. Well, but the studio was there, she told herself. Of course it appeared; a photographer could hardly mask it out.

  26

  F ROM AMONG THE boxes behind the blue van, the cats watched Betty and Leroy finish loading their tools in through its side door, then vanish back into the house. The door to the kitchen clicked shut and the dead bolt slid home, seating itself with a solid thunk-and there was no way to open the dead bolt on the garage side, except with a key.

  They hadn’t wanted to barge back in the house behind those two, to be shut in again with Betty and Ralph Wicken and Leroy. Getting into the house originally, on Betty’s heels, and then slipping into the garage so close to her, had already stretched their luck. It would take only one faint rub against a pant leg, and those three would be on them like hawks on a rabbit.

  And, while Betty Wicken was admittedly a brutal woman to throw a clay pot at a little cat, her brother, Ralph, stirred a deeper fear. Ralph gave all three cats the chills. His thin face and close-cropped hair and big meaty ears made him seem almost like a predatory animal they might meet on the wild hills-but it was Ralph’s smell, of unhealthy, nervous sweat, that made their fur really bristle.

  Even if, to most humans, they were only cats and presented no imminent threat, they did not trust what Ralph or Betty Wicken might think to do to them.

  But now, locked in the Wickens’ garage like mice in a cage, the cats grew uneasy. To someone small, with only claws and teeth, the solidly built garage seemed nearly impregnable.

  The other pedestrian door, which led to the backyard, was secured high above the knob, near the top, with a fastening that they might, or might not, be able to manipulate. And the plywood over the three small, high windows looked to be securely nailed.

  And of course the electric garage door, if they leaped up to push the button, would cause a racket that would bring all three residents storming out-to glimpse them racing away, to realize it must have been cats who had opened that door, and to grow unreasonably alarmed and hostile. Dulcie licked her sweaty paws. Kit bit at a nonexistent flea, and Joe Grey paced, staring up to the ceiling, at the screened air vents high above them between the rafters.

  But first he approached the small side door leading out to the garbage cans, the door they hadn’t been able to open from outside. There was a thin line of light on the left, where the door fit unevenly into its frame. The dead bolt had an in
terior knob, but while it might be possible to turn that, the hasp and loop high above, installed nearly at the top of the door, made the tomcat lay back his ears in consternation.

  There was no padlock through the loop; instead the householders had shoved a heavy stick of wood through. Interesting that they were so security conscious. He wondered if he could climb on the stacked boxes and make a wild leap at the stick-wondered how much noise that would create inside the house as he thudded against the door. Behind him, Kit and Dulcie fidgeted. Joe leaped at last, not at the door but to the top of the van and from the van to the rafters.

  Crouched on a rafter, he considered the three tiny, mesh-covered vents. They were so small that he wondered, even if he could claw the screen off, whether a cat could squeeze through. There looked to be less than three inches of clearance, and Joe wasn’t sure he could get his head through.

  But behind him, Dulcie wasn’t waiting. Leaping to the van’s roof and to the rafter beside him, she stood up on her hind legs and attacked the screen, wildly clawing.

  Off balance, she tore a rip down the nearest mesh grid, and slipped and nearly fell. Joe snatched at her, and braced her with his shoulder. The grid was tightly in place, stapled to the wooden molding and sealed with old paint. Kit leaped up beside them and reared up, too.

  Frantically clawing and joggling each other, the two females at last loosened one corner, blood spattering from their paws. Then Joe took a turn, and with teeth and claws the three cats together managed to pull a corner of the screen free-they pulled until the whole screen came flying, flinging Dulcie off the rafter. She hung clinging, Joe’s teeth gripping her neck like a mama cat holding a kitten.

  He pulled her up until she got a purchase and, scrambling, righted herself. Her paws were bleeding, and her lip was cut-but Kit had squeezed though the vent and was gone, tufts of her dark, bushy tail left behind on the torn screen. They heard her hit the garbage can.

  Dulcie went next, fighting through the rough opening, pulling out hanks of her own fur and raking her tender flesh. Joe heard a second thud as she dropped onto the metal lid.

  Gingerly, the tomcat reared tall and poked his head into the little space. He was bigger than Dulcie and Kit, and he’d hate like hell to get hung up. If he could get his head through, though, then the rest of him could follow. He fought, clawing and wriggling. Rusty wire ripped along his shoulder, and something jabbed down his leg. A nail? But suddenly he was free, and falling.

  He hit the garbage can and thumped to the ground-and they ran, scorching around the side of the house and across the drive, smelling their own blood and leaving bloody paw prints, and into the shadows of the woods, where they crouched together, Dulcie and Kit shivering and Joe Grey tense and angry. Well, at least he’d memorized the license plates of both vehicles, though that seemed, at the moment, small reward.

  “Whatever the Wickens are up to,” Dulcie said, licking her paw, “Harper needs to know about the van.”

  Joe looked back at her. “I’m not sure that’s smart.”

  “Why ever not? We-”

  “If the Wickens go up there during the playhouse competition, we’ll see the van. Whatever they mean to steal, we’ll see them in the act, and then we’ll call the department.”

  “What if they kidnap a child?”

  “They’re not after a child. You heard Betty Wicken, she told Ralph to lay off the kids, to stay away from the school.”

  But Dulcie laid back her ears. “What if we’re wrong? What if we missed something, and they do take a child? I’m going home, to call Harper.”

  Kit said, “My house…”

  Dulcie shook her head. “Lucinda and Pedric have had enough involvement. Let’s don’t make more waves.” And she crouched to leap away.

  Joe stopped her, pushing belligerently in front of her. “Just listen. They’re not going to steal a child. This isn’t about kidnapping, you heard them. I think they’re after something in the old studio.” He looked at her intently. “If Max puts a tail on them, if they spot a cop before they make their move, maybe no one will ever know what they’re after.”

  “You don’t give Harper much credit.”

  “The department is working a murder case, Dulcie. They’re looking for a vanished body, and trying to keep on top of shoplifting and increased holiday thefts. And Harper has officers on double shift to protect the little girl. Plus three officers off for the holidays, and extra patrols around the school. If he sends a uniform up to tail the Wickens, it may have to be a rookie. And if the Wickens make the rookie, they’ll dump the van and take off-maybe never be found.”

  Dulcie quieted. Joe looked intently at her. “The department only stretches so far. And think about this. If the snitch tells Harper that the van was hidden in the Wickens’ garage-and where else would they hide it?-that puts the Greenlaws right on the spot again.

  “Don’t you think,” Joe said, “that Lucinda has been involved enough, for the moment? She brings Harper the pot shards with, presumably, fingerprints on them. She leaves. Then, in a little while, Harper gets an anonymous call that there just happens to be a blue van like Charlie’s, right there below Lucinda’s house? Where,” he asked, “does that leave Lucinda?”

  “With egg on her face,” Dulcie said contritely. “With snitch written all over her.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  The kit looked from one to the other. “Joe’s right, I don’t want to drag Lucinda in again. We just need to be up there when the Wickens get there with the van, we just need to watch them. Meantime,” she said, “Lori and Dillon are going to load up the playhouse and I’m going to watch.” And Kit took off for the seniors’ house, meaning, this once, to keep her mouth shut and not tell the law what she knew.

  Dulcie watched her go flying through the leaves, and then turned quietly for home. She knew that Joe was right. Or, she hoped he was.

  Joe Grey watched them both, twitching an ear, then he laid back his own ears, spun around, and headed fast for the department-to see what he could learn, what new information might have come in. And to put to rest the niggling and edgy voice that said, Is this the right decision? You sure you want to withhold that information from the chief?

  27

  A SQUAD CAR STOOD in the seniors’ drive, its wheels and hood radiating a gentle warmth. As if it had arrived maybe half an hour earlier, Kit thought. The big white Chevy was parked just to the left of the garage, at an angle that left the closed garage doors clear-and that provided, unknown to the cop who had parked it, swift feline access to the hood, to the top of the car, and onto the garage roof. Three leaps, and Kit looked down from the flat, tarred roof at her own paw prints embossed delicately into the squad car’s thin coating of dust-then she padded across the warm tar paper to peer in through Cora Lee’s windows, into her friend’s sunny, bright bedroom.

  The little girl was there, with Officer Eleanor Sand. Kit, twitching her tail with interest, studied the child curled up on the rug before the tall bookcases among a pile of cushions. Cora Lee sat on the floor beside her, an open book in her lap. Eleanor Sand sat on the window seat-looking directly out the window at Kit. The tall, lovely blonde showed surprise for only an instant, and then amusement, at the sight of a cat on the roof. Kit looked back at her uncertainly-then the two big dogs were leaping to the window seat beside Sand, wagging their tails and pressing their noses to the pane inches from Kit’s nose. Everyone was staring at Kit; she didn’t know whether to be embarrassed at being caught snooping or to play it up and let herself strut a little. Because she was certainly, at the moment, onstage.

  But then Cora Lee, laughing, rose and opened the window. Kit stepped in, and the dogs were all over her, slurping and soaking her fur. Cora Lee settled them down, so they backed off, only wagging and grinning. She closed the window and sat down on the floor again, as lithe as a dancer. But the child reached from the cushions, wanting Kit. Her black hair was rumpled, her dark eyes huge. Dodging the dogs, Kit leaped down into the pillow
s and stepped into her arms, and together they snuggled down in the warm nest.

  Gently Cora Lee pulled a lap blanket over the two of them, took up the book again, and, in a dialect that Kit had never heard from her Creole friend, continued the Christmas story. The bright jacket said Ole Saint Nick.

  Cuz dere on de by-you [Cora Lee read],

  W’en I stretch ma’ neck stiff

  Dere’s eight alligator

  A pullin’ de skiff.

  The pictures, when Cora Lee held them for the little girl to see, showed not winter snow, but a sultry river among swampy trees; not reindeer and sled and Santa in a red coat, but the alligators hitched to a little square boat that was filled with bags of gifts. Santa was dressed in brown, but he had a real white, bushy Santa Claus beard; and the child seemed quite comfortable with the change from reindeer to alligators. Halfway through, Cora Lee paused to look up at Eleanor.

  “Our family told a similar Christmas story in Cajun dialect when Donnie and I were little. This book wasn’t published then, but we loved our family version, we heard it several times every Christmas. I was around twenty when this book came out, and I wrote to the author for this signed first edition.”

  “It’s charming,” Sand said. “I’ve never heard it, but the Cajun way of telling makes me feel happy. Interesting,” she added, “that our young friend picked it from among all your picture books.”

  Cora Lee, being an artist, had a handsome collection of picture books, and she could hardly resist buying the most beautiful ones that came out each year. She had followed with excitement the progress of Charlie’s book; though it was not a picture book, it had many illustrations, and Cora Lee had predicted after seeing the first sketches and reading the first rough draft that it would have deep appeal to readers of all ages.