“What if she’s his girlfriend?” Courtney said. “A . . . what do you call it? A pickup. Maybe someone with false identities, the way criminals do, the way you told me about? So Seaver knew the cops wouldn’t find anything.”
Joe Grey sighed. Sometimes he wished he’d keep his big mouth shut. Besides her faulty logic, and an imagination Courtney must have picked up from Kit, what kind of child had he raised? “Come out from there, Courtney. Come out NOW . . .” But then they all heard it, the upstairs door open, footsteps coming down. Courtney slid the window nearly closed and beat it into the shadows under a couch just as Seaver’s dark silhouette appeared.
He came down, sat down at his desk, switched on the light, and picked up a ledger. The cats had fled through the powder room window, making not the slightest sound. But Joe Grey turned and was slipping back to remain watching when the phone rang. Seaver picked up.
Joe eased up onto the crate, lying just beneath the window with his ear to the crack. “Yes?” Seaver said, then was silent for a long moment, then began tapping his pencil on the blotter. “That won’t work, you ninny. She’s not . . .” Another wait, then he laughed. “You are kidding? Everyone in town knows her. That red hair . . . What do you think would happen? She’s the chief of police’s wife, you dummy. You don’t need a shill, a ‘lady companion,’ to make your rounds of the store. Do an appraisal as best you can without expert advice, just get on with it then drift away into the crowds.”
Silence, then, “Well, of course she was better. That can’t be helped now.”
Another, longer pause, then . . . “Oh, right. Just an afternoon of shopping to help out a neighbor. So your father is her neighbor. Has she ever met you? She and Harper have only been married a few years, she was straight down from San Francisco, she didn’t know anyone but her aunt. No. I don’t want any part of that and neither do you. You try that, any of you try it, and we’re done, I’m out of it. The cops’ve likely seen you going in or out my back door. If you get in trouble, we’re all in the muck. Just go on the way you were.”
There was a tiny click from the other end. Seaver stared at the phone, and banged down the receiver. He sat a minute, swearing softly, then put the ledger in a drawer as if bored with his bookwork, turned off the light, and went back upstairs. Courtney watched him, sleepy and innocent, from a brocade couch.
Outside, the minute Seaver was gone, Joe Grey was off the crates and catching up with the other three where they waited in the alley behind the store—but suddenly Dulcie wasn’t with them. She flew past Joe, leaped to the crate, eased the window open and she was inside. Inside with Courtney, with her child. Joe Grey didn’t stop her, she had that intent mothering look when it was best to leave her alone. What did she have in mind? Was she going to babysit all night? She was as stubborn as her kitten, as stubborn as Joe himself—but he did feel better with Dulcie on guard. He stood in the weeds looking up at the sky; the fog had cleared, the moon was bright. A perfect night to hunt. But they had better things to do. He and Kit and Pan, crouched in the alley, laid out their plan; then Kit slipped back to hiss through the window, to tell Courtney and Dulcie what they meant to do—and hoping Courtney wouldn’t go all stubborn again.
When Kit returned to the alley, each cat headed home to tell their respective housemates that they’d found Courtney—though they were all three still angry at the young calico’s hardheadedness. They would go to Wilma to tell her the news, and to Kit and Pan’s old couple, and to Ryan and Clyde.
As they parted, Pan said, “Courtney will be all right. He’s treated her well this far, he hasn’t hurt her. If he thinks he can make money off her, why would he harm her? And, if he does get mean, she’s safer with one of us here each night, to fight and to go for the phone.”
Their plan seemed simple enough. Each cat’s housemate would alert their few human friends who knew the cats could speak, would tell them they’d found Courtney, tell them the cats’ routines and where she was, but they would tell no one else. They would leave the posters up, pretend to still be looking for her; they would not alert even the other members of CatFriends who did not know the cats could talk.
If they took down the posters, if everyone in the village knew she’d been found, Seaver would begin to watch for what kind of trick she was up to. And when she did escape, after the trouble he’d gone to to find and catch her the first time, during a second hunt she might not be safe anywhere.
Each evening before the store closed, one of the cats, taking turns, would slip inside. Would watch the young clerk leave, watch Seaver lock the glass doors securing his valuable wares. They would watch Seaver go back upstairs, watch him let Courtney out of his apartment, watch her race down—and once the clerk left, the rest of the night would be theirs.
If the chosen cat couldn’t slip in through the open front doors unseen, he or she would wait until pale, thin Bert had locked up, scuffling footsteps, heavy coat pulled tight around him as he headed home. When all was quiet, the chosen guard, eyes aglow and tail switching, would crawl in through the powder room window between the bars, under the loose screen and through the barely open glass, to spend the softly lit night with Courtney among gold-decorated and priceless antiques. With a phone on the desk and one in the back room, if something happened they could call the Damens or Wilma or the cops—why would he hurt her if he wanted to make a show cat of her?
But still, Joe was all atremble. The time would come, he knew, when the next step in Seaver’s plan would take shape, a plan that might carry Seaver’s calico prize miles away, first to the gallery in the city and then clear across the country, and how would they find her, then?
11
Joe Grey went on with the others, leaving Courtney and Dulcie in the antiques store but worrying about them both. On the rooftops he parted from Kit and Pan, their two tails, one golden, the other fluffy dark, flipping away under the risen moon as they headed home to their tree house—to Lucinda and Pedric, and to call Wilma.
And Joe raced home over the shingles, his claws scritching as he balanced across heavy oak branches. He heard music playing from the cottages below and smelled late suppers cooking. Then, close to home, the loud and familiar rancor of angry voices. Another Luther Domestic.
Did they have to be so loud? Couldn’t they fight quietly? Did all that shouting help release their anger? Thelma’s and Nevin’s voices came from the house, they were in their bedroom but they might as well have been outside in the yard putting on a two-person play for the neighbors who stood, now, staring in through the window. What were they fighting about this time? What had happened now?
Mindy crouched outside in the bushes beneath the kitchen window, wiping her nose on the arm of the sweater she’d pulled around her. Her silent shaking wasn’t from the cold. From where she huddled, the way the windows were open, she could hear her parents’ every word clearly, something about bank statements, and about “Too loose around the cops,” at which Nevin gave a snorting laugh. Joe climbed into the cypress tree outside their window, its furry branches dense as a jungle—that was when he saw Zeb Luther parked around the corner in an old, faded car, not his own truck, his window down as he listened. Peering through the branches, Joe could just pick out the old man, his ragged gray hair, faded flannel shirt, and worn leather jacket. Mindy’s grandfather. Ryan had said he hadn’t come to visit since the family moved in, she had heard Mindy shouting at her mother and crying about that. What was he doing here this time of night? Spying, listening instead of coming right on in?
This was the man Joe had seen in the village peering across the street into the tearoom at Thelma and Mindy and the freckled auburn-haired man. Joe had seen him standing outside the PD, too, looking uncertain, as if he was trying to decide whether to go in, his frown reflecting some painful decision that had interested Joe even then. The old man who had at last turned away shaking his head, looking so sad. If he hadn’t been such an old man, Joe would have thought he was crying.
Now, the tomcat didn
’t think Nevin and Thelma could see Nevin’s father from the bedroom, the way he was parked and with the tree in the way. They faced each other hissing and snarling like fighting cats themselves, they sure didn’t care who heard them. Not a speck of dignity, Joe thought, nor did they have much feeling for their frightened little girl crouched under their window listening.
But then the subject grew more explicit, Thelma hissed something so quietly that Joe missed it and Nevin snarled angrily, “The hell I won’t and what right do you have to tell me what to do?” Thelma stared down at the neighbors in the street and told him to lower his voice. Joe Grey, in his tree, drew closer.
“You’ll go now!” Thelma snapped. “Right now! And you’ll stay away, the farther the better. You think them cops won’t have figured it out? You think they won’t come . . . ?”
“I’m not leaving until I find that envelope. You think the old bastard won’t go digging into it? What the hell do you . . .” His voice was like daggers. “It’s over a week since I called the bank and they said they’d mailed it and I’m not leaving without it. And the rest of the statements, as well. Just like him to go prying around among my papers. I don’t need him poking into my stuff and I don’t need you poking into my business! And what were you doing with my checkbook? You had to dig deep to find it in my dresser. Give it to me now.” There was a sound as if he’d slapped her. Joe saw her draw back looking shocked.
“Bastard!” she snarled and slapped him in return. “Why the hell did you leave it lying around if you didn’t want me to see it! And that stack of statements. I told you, bring everything with you. Why didn’t . . . ?”
When Joe looked up, Zebulon and his battered car were gone.
So, Joe thought, Nevin moves out of the family house, leaves some of his records and papers. Changes their mail from the rural address to a village PO box. There’s a mix-up at the post office, his bank statement is delivered to the old address. Zebulon gets curious and opens it. And—what? What’s so important? What’s in the bank that Nevin doesn’t want the old man to know about? Or maybe that Thelma doesn’t know everything about? Who does the couple’s banking? Does Nevin do it all? Maybe more money in that account than she thinks they have? Maybe lots more?
“And then you move that money up the coast,” she said. “Why did you put it way up there in the first place, that was really stupid.”
“I’m moving it farther than that, first thing in the morning. And to more than one bank, more places than you’ll ever know. Hell, Thelma. You know where a good part of the money you stole is at, and some of mine and Varney’s, too. The rest of it’s none of your business, you needn’t bother yourself about it.”
“If the cops find last night’s money, maybe with blood on it, you’re in big trouble, Nevin. And where does that put me! You were using my car when that went down! If you go to jail on that kind of charge, they collar me as an accessory even when I didn’t do anything. I land in jail, and where does that leave the kid? Your father can’t take care of her.”
“I’m out of here before they find me. If they put you in jail, if they ID your car—or maybe find evidence that you and Varney have been into the robbing, too—they’ll lock you both up, put the kid in child care and you won’t have to worry about her.”
In the shadows of the yard Mindy left the bushes and slipped in the back door. In a minute Joe could see her in her own bedroom standing nearly out of sight within the thin curtains and he could hear a muffled sniffle. He wanted to leap up and snuggle her; as cranky as Mindy could be, or as sweet, she was, after all, only a confused and needful little girl, hurt and afraid. He was sickened by this family’s lack of love for her, and for each other. He wondered what would happen to her. A child whose only real family, in her own mind, was her grandfather. Whose only other solace was the companionship of her pony.
Joe had heard her tell Thelma, in a lonely little voice, that she only wanted to be home with Grandpa and Tango, heard Thelma’s cold laugh. “You’re no better off with a helpless old man and a dumb horse. What good could either of them do you!” and that was the end of that.
A child with a father and two uncles who didn’t give a damn for her, and a mother who, if she did care, didn’t show it. Thelma didn’t know how to love a child, maybe she had no love in her. There didn’t seem much else in her, either. Though she might talk tough to Nevin and threaten him, she apparently didn’t do anything to change his way of life. It looked to Joe like she just followed along in the same path.
If that murder and robbery last night was Nevin’s work, the thought gave the tomcat shivers: a body crushed to death in a car door.
Nevin and Thelma went silent when a police car came by outside. Nevin looked out the window, watched it cruise quietly away tailing the car it followed, maybe just tourists rubbernecking. But the cop car shook Nevin; he began hastily throwing clothes, a razor, and various toilet articles in a duffel bag and in a few minutes he was gone, out the bedroom, silent as he crossed the living room. Joe heard him quietly open and close the front door, watched him cross the drive and slide into his gray Suzuki, heard the engine as he backed out and took off.
Thelma, still in her robe, crawled into bed and turned out the light. You’d think she would come into Mindy’s room, give her a little hug and some sympathy, spend some time with her to ease the pain of her daddy leaving. But no way.
Maybe better, though, if she left the child alone; Mindy was still crying and Thelma would only say something mean.
Joe watched Mindy’s light go out but he didn’t hear the rustle of covers as if she was getting into bed. He slipped to her sill where he could see in. She was still dressed in jeans and a shirt, and was pulling on a bulkier sweater. She put her ear to the wall of her parents’ room. Joe heard only silence, and so must she. In a minute she softly opened her bedroom door, he could hear her slipping along the hall, headed for the kitchen.
Coming down from the tree, Joe went around the side to the kitchen window. Leaping up and hanging from the sill, he could hear her talking, could see her at the wall phone. His ear to the glass, he could hear her whisper—the gist of which was that her daddy had left, that maybe he wasn’t coming back and good riddance.
“You’re not home yet. Why didn’t you take your cell phone? I saw you parked here, I wanted to sneak over but . . . He’s coming there, Grandpa,” she said, sniffling. “Coming to get some papers, he acted like you stole them. He’s in a mean mood, real mean. Oh, when you get home please pick up the recording, please see the flashing light when you come in—then get out of there. Go back in the woods or to the Harpers’. Hurry, he’s already left, maybe ten minutes. Don’t stay there, Grandpa, I’m afraid of him.” She was sobbing again. She choked, “I love you, I pray you get my message,” and she hung up.
12
Joe watched Mindy make a peanut butter sandwich and pour a glass of milk. He watched her leave the kitchen taking her lone supper down the hall. He climbed the cypress again and looked in her bedroom window—not like a human voyeur, he thought, amused, but feeling only pity. Now the room was dimly lit, she had turned on two tiny night-lights plugged in just above the floor; she sat up in bed, in her clothes, wolfing the sandwich and gulping the milk between sobs. Did she turn on those lights every night to give herself comfort? He wondered if she’d done that at her grandfather’s house or only here where she felt alone and unwanted. Her red sweater hung on the bedpost, her shoes and socks lay underneath, her school backpack beside them, he could see a white T-shirt stuffed in on top.
Finished eating, she set the empty plate and glass on the night table and tucked down under the covers. Joe watched her roll herself in the blankets, trembling with sobs, and pull one blanket over her head. The moon was starting to brighten the eastern treetops and the tops of the hills. He waited a long time until she swallowed back the last gulp of crying and began slowly, slowly to ease into the calmer breathing of sleep.
Only when he was sure she slept did he leave the
cypress tree, moving away through its branches to the springy limbs of a small pine and across to his own roof, to his private tower. There he slid through its open window, looked out once more at Mindy, then burrowed among his scattered pillows where there was only peace: no crying, hurt child, no hateful human mothers. He could just see, in Mindy’s shadowed room, the child cocooned in her blankets. Curling down among his cushions in his own safe place, Joe positioned himself so he could keep an eye on her. Yawning, he wondered what would happen at Zebulon Luther’s house when Nevin slipped in—or marched boldly in—to retrieve his bank statements, wondered if Zeb would be there, if he’d gotten Mindy’s message? Or had he left it unnoticed on the recorder?
If Nevin got there first, as mad as he was, how cruel could he get with his own father? And Joe wondered if he should go down to Clyde’s desk and call Harper.
Or was their argument only a family hassle that would end up amounting to nothing? Even if Nevin did leave, would he have cooled down before he got to Zeb’s place? Joe avoided vague tips to the law that could turn into nothing. That would only make Harper unsure of the reliability of his snitch. Yawning, meaning to think about it for a minute as he watched Mindy, he was soon sound asleep.
He must have been asleep when she left, he woke to see the moon shining straight in onto her bed, onto a mound of covers thrown back. Her shoes and sweater were gone. Her school backpack that had been leaning against the bed was no longer there. That’s when Joe leaped from his tower into the house onto his rafter, down to the king-sized bed, and pawed at Ryan’s face.
“Mindy’s gone. Run away . . . clothes, backpack.”
But Clyde was already up and dressed. Ryan rolled out of bed, pulling on sweats. “Mindy’s not the only one.”
Cat Chase the Moon Page 8
