Maurita hugged Charlie; she had begun to feel more at ease, more in charge of herself. As if she had found something of herself that was lost—lost or maybe never discovered.
“Meanwhile,” Charlie said, “we can dust up your house a bit, change the sheets, get in some groceries.” And the four of them headed for Zebulon’s place, to brighten Maurita’s new home, to make it ready and welcoming. Mindy and Maurita, Charlie and Zebulon worked for the rest of the day, washing windows, cleaning the kitchen. Rearranging Maurita’s new room, which had been Nevin’s. The room of no-good Thelma’s husband, but that didn’t bother Maurita.
With freshly washed curtains and clean windows, she would see, in early morning, the sun rise over the eastern hills, would see at night the sun set above the sea. Looking around her, she felt clean, she felt new. The way she used to wish life would be. All she’d needed was a little help. The terror of DeWayne’s brutality was beginning to fade, wiped away by human friends, human love. By the surprise of being part of her own family. And, earlier, by the warmth of those long, quiet days of cat love.
When Charlie and the Luthers arrived back at the Harper ranch for an early supper, Max’s truck was parked by the house. “I took off early,” he said, coming in, yawning. “Handed it over to Cameron for the night—all those bastards are snug in their cells. Dallas and I are on call.”
Across from the house, above the hay barn, the Luthers’ beds were already made up in two rooms next to Billy’s. Both Zeb and Maurita found they were able to handle the stairs, with Mindy’s help; and Billy Young had been busy. The outside alarm was set, two loaded firearms stood inside Billy’s and Zeb’s bedroom doors, and the two big dogs ran loose and watchful in the fenced entry yard. Mindy had strict instructions not to touch the shotgun and rifle. “When you are old enough,” Max said, “and that will be soon, you will have the same safety training as Billy is getting. Maybe even take the same classes as a police cadet, if you like.”
Mindy grinned at him with delight, and so did Zebulon. Zeb would much rather have her thoroughly trained by a professional, than to do a bad job himself.
It was that night, during supper, that the earring appeared.
Supper was a tamale pie that Charlie had taken from the freezer, and a salad that Mindy made. They had just sat down when they heard Jimmie McFarland’s car pull up in front, parking next to Max’s truck. Charlie let him in and asked him to join them. He was carrying a small white box. He said he had eaten, but accepted a slice of lemon pie and coffee. Jimmie, glancing kindly at Maurita, held out the box to Max.
“Dallas found this, just a little while ago. Or, Joe Grey found it.”
“Joe Grey found it,” Max said in a flat, uneasy voice. Charlie’s stomach lurched. Max said, “Let’s hear it,” in that same suspicious tone.
They all knew the Saks crime scene extended from the store itself to the pile-up of cars being hauled away on the highway; but that it also included the motel rooms where the burglars had stayed as they posed as limo drivers. The sun was setting when Detective Garza and Jimmie McFarland went to work on that part of the scene. At the same moment, Joe Grey was running the rooftops, working off some of his grieving before they all returned to the Pamillon estate to bid Courtney a last good-bye. Racing the shingles among the smell of restaurant suppers, he saw a squad car and Jimmie’s car below him and yellow crime tape strung around the motel and parking lot. He backed down a young acacia tree and was about to slip into the motel to see what Jimmie was doing, when, deep in the flowery ground cover, he stepped on something that hurt.
Something hard but delicate, buried deep among the blooms. He pawed it gently out.
There was the earring.
The ornately fashioned gold loop looked, indeed, as if it had been made by Peruvian hands, like pictures of that ancient jewelry he had seen, an intricately carved crescent moon hanging from its center. He was sniffing at it when he heard footsteps.
Dallas Garza stood over him.
He looked up at Dallas and pawed at the earring as if playing, as would a kitten with a toy. Dallas looked back at him with all the suspicion he’d ever felt about Joe Grey. Not cold, cop suspicion, but startled disbelief.
The detective turned away, fetched a small box from his glove compartment, emptied it and lay the earring inside, then slipped the box into a small evidence bag. Returning to Joe, he called Jimmie over. “Take this up to Max. He went home early.”
Now, at the Harpers’, before Jimmie tied into his pie and coffee, he handed the box to Max. “Dallas found this near the motel. They’re finished with it, fingerprints, DNA, photos—didn’t take long. He thought Maurita might want it.”
As long as DeWayne was dead, and Maurita hadn’t wanted to press charges, there wasn’t much point in keeping this one piece of evidence. They had the bloody pictures, the doctors’ reports, the other, smashed earring. And DeWayne’s accomplices had plenty of other charges against them, in case they were involved.
Max took the box from Jimmie and opened it. He studied the contents, then held it out to Maurita. She accepted it, looking sick. The earring lay on a clean cotton pad, it was battered only a little, an ornate gold loop with an intricate crescent moon suspended inside. She touched the scar down her torn ear, felt the surgeon’s stitching. She sat looking at the earring for a long time, thinking, then looked up at Max. “Do you have a spade, or a short shovel?”
Max rose from the table. But Jimmie said, “I know where they are,” and he was out through the tiled mud room that served as the house’s one entry. Heading for the stable, the two big half-Danes leaped all over him barking and licking his face. Jimmie ruffled their ears and told them to get down. They obeyed him, watching as he put a shovel and a spade in his car, then stood waiting for Maurita.
“We won’t be long,” Maurita said in the doorway as she stopped to hug Charlie. “I’ll do dish duty tomorrow, and I’ll cook.” Zeb and Max watched her with interest. Already she looked stronger, as if doing a day’s work, as if beginning to make a new home, was already driving back the weakness that had overwhelmed her.
In Jimmie’s car, they turned north up the highway, then left down Ocean Avenue to the beach. Here it was darker as thick fog rolled in, hiding the last of the sunset. Jimmie opened the trunk while Maurita prowled the sandy park, stepping carefully, looking down at the sand and the way the fallen trees lay. When she had her bearings she took the shovel, and slipped the spade in her belt. When he moved to help, she looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read.
“I want to do this, Jimmie.”
She dug for a long time, but the sandy dirt was soft. She dug nearly as deep as she could reach, then she used the spade to make a tiny hole. She dropped in the box. She wrote nothing on it, she said no word. She filled in the little hole, pounding the dirt with the handle of the spade, then shoveled back the dirt she had removed. She smoothed it over roughly with the shovel, then walked across it a few times, kicked some grass across it and tossed on a few small stones so it resembled its surround, matching the rest of the park.
She cleaned off the tools with a tissue and put them back in the trunk. He closed the trunk and took her hand. They walked across the little road that ended where the beach began; the waves were high, crashing in. They climbed the cliff high above the sand, sat hand in hand, in silence, Maurita’s long black hair blowing in her face. Her expression was a church kind of look, deep and thankful. As if she had buried the last of her hatred. As if her anger and resentment would lie there deep beneath the earth until time ended, completely removed from her. She looked past the breakers to the soft blanket of fog, and she leaned silently against Jimmie.
29
It was dark when the cats gathered in the mansion’s north grotto, deep down but where, in one adjoining alcove, their human friends could crowd in. Those who could speak to them, who could say good-bye to Courtney and the ferals. The ferals had, most of them, promised to return. Courtney made no such promises. She said onl
y, “I’ll try. I think I will come back.”
Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw had picked up Dulcie and Courtney and Wilma at her cottage. Ryan and Clyde and Joe Grey had squeezed John and Mary Firetti and the two boy kittens in the back of Clyde’s Jaguar. Kate and Scotty had walked down through the ruins and were already in the cavern. Charlie was absent but she had sent a loving message by way of Ryan; there was no way she could leave her new guests tonight when they needed the warmth of friends around them. And no way she cared to leave Max when he was still scowling with suspicion about Joe Grey.
Dulcie was crying as they gathered in the grotto. Kit was crying so hard she had to keep wiping her nose on Pan’s golden fur, which didn’t please him. His own eyes were both sad and yearning. He’d very much like to go back with Courtney, as would Kit. They had traveled to the Netherworld, they had thrilled and shivered at its wonders and they were sharply drawn, now, to return with the calico and the ferals.
But Kit couldn’t leave Lucinda and Pedric a second time, nor could Pan. How many years did their old couple have left? When she watched Courtney’s two brothers licking and snuggling their sister and listened to their sad mewls, it was too much. Kit yowled until Pan cuffed her and she went silent, pressing against him; and Courtney watched them all with painfully mixed feelings.
She knew she had to go down, she wasn’t safe here. She knew there was a place for her, a special place for the calico with the three bracelets, she believed what the ferals had told her. She was filled with excitement at what she would discover in that new world, and was terrified at what she might confront. She looked helplessly at her family and friends, confusion boiling in her heart—but something called to her, from that world. And she was glad the ferals would be with her, she would be terrified to go down alone.
She rose. She faced her parents and her dear friends. She whispered, but then she said boldly, “Good-bye. I love you. I love you all as I love the spirit who made us. I will come back to you.” Turning, not looking back again, she headed for the little hidden cave that would drop down to the rocky tunnel that would lead, by morning, into the Netherworld: the ferals were all around her, some disappeared ahead of her, racing down into the black tunnel, dropping down and down, abandoning the upper world.
They were gone. Courtney was gone.
Courtney’s friends and family went away silently, in twos and threes, back into the village where the calico would no longer be present; leaving the Pamillon estate where there would no longer be any speaking ferals. Everyone was crying, Scotty and Clyde hiding their tears.
What would occur in the world of speaking cats, in the future, no one knew.
That night, Joe and Dulcie sat together atop Wilma’s roof looking east toward the hills where hidden chasms fell down into that other world. There was fog low over the hills, veiling a thin smear of moonlight. They didn’t speak. Until Dulcie said, “We raised a strong girl. What amazing things will she do there?”
“We raised three strong kittens,” Joe Grey said. “Each has chosen a useful life, each will make their mark. This is not the end. This is the beginning.”
But there would be many nights when they would sit together brooding, looking up at the hills or out across the sea. Or they would sit with Wilma watching the moon rise, contemplating the lives that had come before and those that will come after. Knowing there was cruelty and pain in this world, but knowing this wasn’t the last life. Knowing that the true living spirit was courage, mixed with love, and Courtney had that. And, as Ryan and Clyde reminded them, the calico carried within her the genes of their own spirits. A part of Joe and Dulcie would always be with her.
About the Author
SHIRLEY ROUSSEAU MURPHY is the author of twenty-one mysteries in the Joe Grey series, for which she has won the Cat Writers’ Association Muse Medallion eleven years running, and has received ten national Cat Writers’ Association Awards for best novel of the year. She is also a noted children’s book author, and has received five Council of Authors and Journalists Awards. She lives in Carmel, California, where she serves as full-time household help to two demanding feline ladies.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Shirley Rousseau Murphy
Cat Shining Bright
Cat Shout for Joy
Cat Bearing Gifts
Cat Telling Tales
Cat Coming Home
Cat Striking Back
Cat Playing Cupid
Cat Deck the Halls
Cat Pay the Devil
Cat Breaking Free
Cat Cross Their Graves
Cat Fear No Evil
Cat Seeing Double
Cat Laughing Last
Cat Spitting Mad
Cat to the Dogs
Cat in the Dark
Cat Raise the Dead
Cat Under Fire
Cat on the Edge
The Catsworld Portal
By Shirley Rousseau Murphy and Pat J. J. Murphy
The Cat, the Devil, the Last Escape
The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
cat chase the moon. Copyright © 2019 by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover illustration © Beppe Giacobbe
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Murphy, Shirley Rousseau, author.
Title: Cat chase the moon : a Joe Grey mystery / Shirley Rousseau Murphy.
Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : William Morrow, [2018] | Series: Joe Grey mystery ; 21
Identifiers: LCCN 2018032655 | ISBN 9780062838049 (hc)
Subjects: LCSH: Grey, Joe (Fictitious character) —Fiction. | Cats--Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3563.U7619 C2 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032655
Digital Edition APRIL 2019 ISBN 978-0-06-283806-3
Print ISBN 978-0-06-283804-9
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