Cat On The Edge

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  They nosed up under the windowsills, and beneath the climbing vine at the other end of the alley where Dulcie had been crouching when Beckwhite was murdered. They climbed the jasmine trellis to the roof and searched there, pawing along the metal gutters into a sticky mixture of mud and slimy dead leaves. Joe grinned. If he found the mess repulsive, Dulcie was ready to retch. Every little while he heard her trying to lick off the stickly accumulation, then sputtering out cat spit.

  They searched the entire roof, then searched the alley again, but they found no weapon.

  Sitting on the damp brick walk, Dulcie said, "Maybe he still had the wrench when he chased you. Maybe he hid it somewhere else."

  "If he just wanted to hide the evidence, it could be anywhere."

  "But Joe, if he hid it to get Clyde-so if Clyde crossed him in some way, then…"

  "I still don't get why Clyde would cross him. They weren't friends. It would have to be something at the shop." He frowned. "Clyde serviced the cars Wark shipped in, but that's all. They didn't even like each other-at least Clyde doesn't much like Wark. What else could have been between them?"

  She licked her paw. "Could Clyde know something about Wark? Something to do with the shop?"

  Joe flicked an ear. "I've never heard him say anything. Never heard him say anything to Max Harper. If he knew something illegal that Wark had done, he'd tell the chief of police. Clyde's as straight as an old woman."

  She shifted her bottom on the cold brick paving.

  "But Clyde has been coming home from work really short-tempered lately. Not like himself. And when Beckwhite…"

  He stopped speaking. His eyes widened. "I just remembered something." He spun around, and headed for the fog-muffled street. "Come on. Maybe I know where Wark hid the wrench."

  She ran to catch up. Within minutes, racing along the foggy streets side by side, they slid into the crawl space beneath the antique shop where Joe had escaped from Wark.

  The earth was cold beneath their paws. The dark, moldy dirt smelled sour. Neither of them mentioned the sharp scent of female cat. As they pushed underneath, festoons of cobwebs caught at their ears and whiskers.

  He said, "That night, when I hid under here, just before I ran out the back, Wark knelt and looked in. I thought he meant to crawl in, but he only reached, feeling around. Maybe that's what he was doing; maybe he was hiding the wrench."

  He reared up, sniffing at the top of the concrete foundation where it supported the heavy old floor joists.

  Dulcie patted at the earth along the foundation beneath the opening, to see if Wark might have dug a shallow hole. But the earth was smooth and hard. Probably no one had dug in this ground for a hundred years, except for the resident cat-a female, she had noticed. She wondered about that, about why Joe had picked this particular building to hide under.

  But he'd told her. It was the first place he could get under. All the other shops were store buildings on concrete slabs, no crawl space. This old place had been a house, once. Houses had crawl spaces. Wilma's house had a lovely crawl space, cool in hot weather, and delightfully mouse-scented, though the mice themselves had long ago met their maker.

  She nosed along the top of the concrete foundation, reaching her paw warily behind ragged bits of black building paper. She didn't want to rip her soft pads on a hidden nail. She wondered how far Wark could have reached in. After some feet of poking and sniffing, she hissed, "Here. Something cold."

  She pawed aside a ragged corner of building paper that was caught between a double joist. Its end sat securely atop the cement foundation, a double beam built to support some extra weight in the house above. Maybe a refrigerator; or more likely an old-fashioned icebox, from the age of the place.

  The wrench was there, shoved up between the two joists. She tried to pry it out, then Joe tried, clutching it between his paws. The wrench wouldn't budge.

  "Be careful," she said. "His fingerprints could be on it, as well as Clyde's."

  "Damned hard to get it out without pawing. I wonder if he wore gloves."

  "Well, did you see gloves on his hands?"

  "I don't remember. I was too busy saving my neck. I don't know how else to get it down, without smearing it. Do you have a better idea?"

  She stood on her hind legs, tapping at the wrench with a delicate paw. "What about this hole, here in the end?"

  The small hole that ran through the end of the handle wasn't big enough to get a paw through. Joe could just hook his claws in. He pulled as hard as he dared without tearing out a claw, but the wrench remained solidly secured. As he backed away licking his paw, Dulcie said, "What would a human do?"

  "How the hell do I know?"

  He pictured with amusement Clyde's infrequent household repairs.

  But Clyde did know how to use a lever. Clyde claimed levers had been one of the great steps forward for mankind. That seemed to Joe a little much, but what did he know? Certainly the lever system was innovative, at least from a cat's point of view. He'd been fascinated when Clyde levered up the heavy file cabinet in the spare bedroom, when a black widow spider ran underneath.

  Clyde wouldn't have bothered to kill a spider just for himself. Probably if a black widow bit Clyde, it would be the one to die. But, afraid for the animals, he had lifted the file cabinet by wedging it up with a long metal rod. When the spider ran out, he stomped it. The smashed spider had left a permanent black spot on the carpet.

  Thinking about the lever, he moved away into the blackness to prowl the cavernous space, and soon Dulcie joined him, searching for a piece of iron, maybe a scrap left from some repair, or even a stout stick to help dislodge the wrench.

  Searching through the scent of female cat, he was interested that Dulcie did not remark upon the matter. Well if she wasn't asking, he wasn't offering. Anyway, what difference? That was another life. That female meant nothing, now.

  When they found no lever to use on the wrench, nothing but a few rusty nails, Dulcie headed for the street. Trotting out the hole in the foundation, moving along through the fog, she stared up at each parked car until she found one with a window half-open.

  She leaped, hung by her front paws, and climbed through, her belly dragging on the glass. She disappeared inside.

  Joe waited, watching the street. Twice he leaped up the side of the car to stare in, but she was on the floor, he couldn't see what she was doing. When she appeared at the glass again, she had a thin, rusty screwdriver in her mouth, securely clamped between her teeth.

  As she climbed out, the metal hit the glass with a little ping.

  Within minutes, in the dark beneath the antique shop, they had pushed the screwdriver through the hole in the torque wrench. Bracing the lever against a joist, Joe laid his weight on the handle.

  The wrench gave, it slid down a few inches.

  But then it stuck again. He pried harder. He was able to force it slowly out, until it protruded so far he couldn't get a purchase.

  When still it was stuck, Dulcie pushed him aside. Leaping up, wrapping all four paws around the screwdriver, hanging upside down, she swung hard, lashing her tail, jiggling and bouncing.

  The wrench fell with Dulcie under it, she hit the ground hard. She lay still, panting. The wrench lay across her. Joe nosed at her, frightened, until she began to untangle herself.

  "You okay?" he said at last.

  "I'm fine." She licked at her shoulder. "We'd better find something to wrap the evidence. The police use plastic."

  "Or we'd better wipe it clean, if Clyde's prints are on it."

  "We don't know what's on it. The killer's prints could be there, too, if he was careless."

  They found a newspaper on the porch of the antique shop and removed the plastic bag into which it had been inserted to protect it against damp weather. Within moments they had bagged the evidence.

  They left the cellar carrying the heavy package between them, heading north. When a young couple approached them out of the fog, walking slowly with their arms around each other
, they ducked into a doorway. When the bleary lights of a car sought them, they crouched over the wrench to hide it.

  Several times Joe left Dulcie guarding the plastic bundle as he investigated possible hiding places. But nosing through the mist into niches between walls and into doorways, no place suited him. As they approached the Dixieland music emanating from Donnie's Lounge, he quickened his pace.

  A walled patio served as entry to Donnie's neighborhood bar. The little stone paved rectangle was bordered on three sides by wide flower beds planted with marigolds. The flowers' sharp scent tickled the cats' noses.

  They laid the murder weapon among a tangle of yellow blooms where the earth was soft, and they dug.

  As they loosened each flower, Dulcie laid it aside, careful not to bite through the stem. She thought the flowers might be poison, too. She had seen a list once of plants poisonous to cats, but she didn't remember much of it. Only oleander and, she thought, tomato leaves. Who would want to chew on a tomato vine? Each time the doors to Donnie's swung open, the music burst out, hurting their ears, but with a wildly compelling beat. The surge of jazz was laced heavily with the sharp smell of beer and whiskey. As they dug, Dulcie got that faraway look as if dreaming again, dreaming about a night of barhopping.

  When the hole was some eighteen inches deep, they lowered the plastic-wrapped evidence. Dulcie said, "I feel like we're burying a corpse in one of those body bags."

  "Should we say a few words over the deceased?"

  She grinned. "Say a prayer for the man who killed Beckwhite. I think he's going to need it."

  They pushed dirt back on top of the plastic-wrapped wrench, and Dulcie pressed each marigold in carefully, patting earth around its roots just as Wilma would do. "We don't want them to die, someone might investigate."

  She resettled the last of the soil, then pawed dry leaves over the earth's wound. When no sign of digging remained, she stepped out of the flower bed, shook her paws, and licked the remaining earth from them. "No sense in leaving pawprints."

  They were headed across the small stone patio for the street when the bar door swung open. Light from within hit the stone wall, driving them back down its length into shadow.

  At first sight of the two men emerging, they hunched lower, and Joe swallowed back a snarl. Dulcie's fur bristled.

  Lee Wark came down the path not five feet from them.

  "And that's Jimmie Osborne," Joe breathed. "Why is Osborne out drinking with Beckwhite's killer?"

  The men swung past them out the gate, both jingling car keys, and headed north. The cats followed, Dulcie proceeding warily, Joe pushing ahead quick and predatory, coldly hating Wark, and with precious little love for Osborne.

  He'd never liked Osborne-the man was a bully and a coward. How many times when Jimmie and Kate were over to the house for supper, had Osborne been coldly rude to Kate.

  Joe smiled. It made his night to annoy the man; he considered it a perfect evening when he could harass Osborne, torment him until he turned pale with rage. And with fear.

  Now, hurrying through the fog after the two men, both cats grimaced at the smell of the killer. Wark's scent, more distinctive than Osborne's faint aroma, lingered sharply in the damp air. The smell goaded Dulcie, she forgot her earlier fear. Moving along beside Joe, she crouched to a slinking stalk, her ears clutched flat to her head, her tail lashing. Creeping through the fog, she gauged her distance. She considered the angle of thrust needed for a clean leap onto Wark's back, contemplating with delicious anticipation her claws digging in.

  16

  The cream-colored cat lay sick and confused, looking out through the wire door of a cage. Her thoughts were fuzzed, her vision blurred. She could make out rows of cages lining the small, square room, wire enclosures stacked three tiers high, marching around three walls. Nothing would stay in focus; no thought wanted to stay in focus. She lay sprawled on the metal cage floor, too weak to try to get up.

  She was terribly thirsty. There was no water inside her enclosure, no small metal bowl as she could see in the other cages; she could smell the water, mixed with strong, less appealing smells. She didn't know how she had gotten into a cage; she had a sharp physical memory of Lee Wark throwing her against the concrete, a sharp replay of the pain, of terrible jolt exploding in blackness-then nothing.

  She could remember waking before in this cage, waking then dropping back into sleep; her mind was filled with fragments of detached voices and with sounds that would not come together, with the rank medicine smell, and with the sounds of metal instruments against a metal table. She had no idea how long she had been here, no notion of time passing.

  She remembered the feel of a plastic tube bound to her front leg, and of its little pin inserted with a sharp prick beneath her skin.

  The stink of medicine clung to her fur. Her left foreleg was bandaged. It smelled so sharply of medicine that when she sniffed it she sneezed; the jolt of sneezing hurt her deep inside.

  As her vision began to clear, she looked around intently for a way out. The walls behind the cages were made of unpainted concrete block. All but three of the cages were empty. The other tenants were a big brown dog sleeping deeply, four kittens asleep tangled together, and a black-and-white terrier pacing his enclosure dragging a stiff white leg. No, it was a white cast on his front leg.

  Her eyes didn't work right, everything was fuzzy. Overhead, one soft light burned, a long fluorescent tube in a white metal fixture. Two other fixtures hung from the ceiling, one at either side, both unlit. The fourth wall of the room was blank except for a window and a metal-clad door, and a water hydrant protruding from the concrete floor.

  The lone window was dark with night, but its blackness was rimed with fog, too, with a pale, blowing mist so thick that the window seemed to be underwater. The closed window was shielded from entry, or from escape, by a thick metal grid. As she looked, a flash of light ran striking across the fogged glass, as if from a car passing somewhere beyond; and she could hear the swift hush of tires on wet pavement, then the roar of several cars, fast-moving, as they would be passing on a highway. Her mind was as muzzy as her vision; but it clung to the one distressing fact that she was in an animal cage, that she was locked up in some kind of kennel.

  But no, it was a clinic. Dr. Firreti's clinic. She had a vague memory of Firreti's face, round and smooth and sunburned, leaning close to her.

  Firreti did something with stray cats. She could not remember what.

  Why was she here? She wasn't a stray.

  Had Lee Wark brought her here? Had Wark brought her here after he beat her? But why? For what purpose? Or had she gotten here somehow on her own after she was hurt, had come here needing help?

  She stared at the closed wire door. Shut in like this, Wark or anyone could get at her. She tried to get up but lay back; the effort left her weak.

  She could remember being in another room with concrete walls, and the same medicine smell; that was the room of the metal table and the voices, and the hands on her gentle but insistent. Her thoughts kept going around; she couldn't concentrate.

  She tried again to get to her feet, but it was an effort even to lift her head and shoulders, a terrible effort to roll from her side onto her belly. When she did roll to that more erect position, pain shot through her ribs.

  On the next try, she made it to her feet, but the hot jab forced her down again, crouching and panting.

  She listened, but heard no sound from beyond this room. She tried again to rise, suppressing a sharp, involuntary mewl. She lurched up; and this time she remained standing and moved to the cage door, stood leaning against it.

  The door was secured from outside. She thrust her paw through, ignoring the hurt, feeling around for a latch.

  She found a slide bolt, and began to work at it, pulling and wiggling it.

  After a long time, when the bolt didn't give, she forced both paws through. The pain as she stretched out brought another involuntary mewl. The thought of something broken in her
small, tender self turned her nearly helpless with fear.

  But the thought of Wark finding her in here; or of the veterinarian prodding and examining her further, filled her with a deeper terror. What would a veterinarian find if he studied her closely? Not a normal cat. She fought the bolt, clawing and poking, bruising her paws, and at last managed to work it free. The gate swung out so suddenly she nearly fell.

  Catching herself, backing away, she rested. She had no strength. She was so terribly thirsty, panicked with thirst. The metal water pipe drew her with an insistence that sent her leaping down; she landed so hard on the concrete that tears spurted. She crouched and threw up bile. The terrier began to bark. His shrill cries filled the room, echoing, hurting her ears.

  Beneath the water hydrant beside a round metal drain shone a small puddle of water. She lapped thirstily. The floor smelled of Clorox and of dog urine. When the water was gone she fought to open the tap, but she couldn't budge it. Defeated, she approached the heavy door. The terrier's shrill staccato was so loud that it, too, seemed to be physical hurt.

  Someone would hear him-there were houses close to the clinic. Staring up at his cage, she yowled at him. She might as well have yowled at a blank wall.

  In desperation she shouted. "Stop it! Shut up and lie down!"

  The human command, lashing out from a cat, threw the beast into a frenzy. Yapping he flung himself at his door, trying to get at her. As he heaved at the wire, she crouched before the tall metal door. Ignoring the furor she whispered, making the spell.

  She was falling, spinning down, dizzy, whirling, then spinning up.

  She was tall, she was Kate again. The terrier roared in shocked rage. She knelt by the hydrant, turned it on, and drank deeply, like a starving animal, getting soaked and not caring. Then, accompanied by the nerve-shattering barking, she turned the door's dead bolt and pulled the door open just enough to look out.