Cat Striking Back Read online

  He saw that the couple had a key to the house. The front door creaked as the man pulled it open, and they disappeared inside. He sat studying the barn, wanting to look inside and see if there was a good place to dig. Thinking about moving the body, putting it down in the earth, her corpse seemed to loom larger as if she was pressing up at the lid wanting out, reaching out to him. Had he meant to push her? Had something inside him meant all along to kill her? Again her eyes seemed to be the cat’s eyes, the eyes of that long-ago kitten watching him.

  Below him the couple stood at the living room window, looking out and talking. They couldn’t see him, way up at the top of the hill the eucalyptus branches hung nearly to the ground and his car was pulled in behind some discarded machine parts, too, and a tumble of slatted wooden crates that looked like they’d been rotting there for years. Soon they left the window, disappeared from his view.

  They were gone maybe twenty minutes. Not knowing where they were, he began to grow edgy. He felt not only watched uncannily from the trunk but watched from the house. He wanted to get away from there, he didn’t like the sense of being observed.

  But if he pulled out now and drove off, they’d be sure to see him. And even driving away, he couldn’t escape her presence.

  They came out at last, locked the front door, walked around the outbuildings again, and then went back in the barn. A laugh behind him made him jump, scared him nearly to death. He swung around in the seat, looking.

  At the crest of the hill he saw two boys on bikes, heard the crunch of gravel and more laughter. Shrinking lower in the seat, he turned the key, wanting to start up and peel out. But he stopped himself from doing that. It was just two kids pedaling along a narrow dirt path that ran beyond the eucalyptus tree and on up the hill. There was more crunching of gravel, a guffaw of laughter as one lightly shoved the other. He waited, hunched low, until they’d gone.

  When he looked down again at the ranch yard, the couple was headed for their car. He watched them swing in and drive on up the hill, past him. Neither looked in his direction. He sat for only a minute deciding whether to follow them or wait to look the place over. They took off across the hills, the woman’s dark, gleaming hair blowing enticingly in the wind. He started the engine and slowly followed them. Staying maybe a quarter mile behind the yellow car, he wished his own car wasn’t white and so easy to see. They made a sharp turn, and another, and he lost them among a stand of pines.

  But then there they were again, a moving yellow spot beyond the trees. It slowed and became a car again, and as he rounded the next curve, they were pulling up in front of a driveway that was blocked by two pickups and a tall pile of dirt. He pulled over behind the first trees he came to, a stand of shaggy cypress with dense, low branches.

  Was all that dirt from the drain the couple had been talking about? They’d joked about digging an indoor swimming pool, but no drain was ever that big. Still, that was a hell of a dirt pile. Maybe luck was with him. Maybe, whatever kind of drain this was, it would be better, even, than the barn, would be exactly what he wanted.

  13

  WILMA GETZ’S FLOWERING front garden was in fact Dulcie’s garden, where the tabby liked to hunt gophers and moles, and she would challenge with tooth and claw any neighborhood cat who coveted her tangled territory. The tabby might exhibit all the subtle intelligence of the rare, speaking cat, but she was a primitive little fighter when it came to her hunting ground. The feline passion for independence, just like the human passion for liberty, she believed included a right to one’s own place, inviolate against all intruders.

  The one-story stone house she considered hers and Wilma’s together, it was just the right size for Dulcie and her silver-haired housemate. When Wilma retired from her job as a U.S. probation officer, she had moved from San Francisco directly to her dream home in Molena Point. That was before she ever met Dulcie; she had been well settled when she brought the small tabby kitten home to live with her. The slim, energetic woman hadn’t known, then, what kind of cat this was with whom she would share her life. She didn’t discover until Dulcie was grown the extent of the young cat’s talents. That first conversation between woman and cat had been a milestone that cat lovers everywhere would envy but few would ever experience.

  Charlie and Joe Grey arrived at Wilma’s house, coming straight from tailing the man in the white car. They watched Dulcie leave the living room window, and then saw Wilma at the kitchen window, waving to them. They hurried across the garden, surrounded by the rich scent of apricots cooking, Joe racing ahead to disappear through Dulcie’s cat door.

  Because of the steep hill that rose close behind the house, both the front and back doors faced the street, one at either end of the cottage. Charlie and Joe preferred the back door, which led through the laundry room and into Wilma’s blue-and-white kitchen.

  Wilma stood at the kitchen counter crimping a pie crust, her long gray hair tied back crookedly with a silver clasp, her pale blue T-shirt protected by a faded apron. Dulcie had already leaped to her chair at the kitchen table, waiting for them, her tail switching, her eyes alight to see Joe. As the tomcat jumped up to join her, Wilma set a saucer of milk before them and half a dozen cookies, and stood looking at Joe. “You found a body this morning? You found where a body was?”

  Joe looked up at her questioningly.

  “Ryan called. They were to look at some houses, and she told me. I gather Clyde wasn’t enchanted.” The older woman turned away to finish crimping the crust, then set the pie in the oven. She poured two cups of coffee and sat down at the table across from Charlie.

  “Makes me shiver,” she said. “A body in that empty swimming pool. I’m surprised the city hadn’t made the Parkers cover that hole so a child wouldn’t fall in.”

  “This was no child,” Joe said. “From the scent, I’d say a grown woman. Her blood was barely dry.”

  Dulcie shifted impatiently. “Tell us from the beginning.”

  Joe, and then Charlie, filled them in from the time Joe had first approached the empty pool in the predawn dusk until he and Charlie, and Ryan and Clyde, tried to follow the eavesdropper.

  “If Kit and I had known what you were going to find this morning,” Dulcie said, “we’d have come back with you from the hills.”

  “I didn’t plan to find it. You didn’t have to go off chasing the wild clowder. What gets into Kit?”

  “She saw a little cream-colored cat,” Dulcie said. “It was so strange, Kit felt an instant rapport with her, an instant friendship. She seems totally possessed by the little waif.”

  “Kit gets possessed,” Joe said. “Some wild idea takes hold of her and she can think of nothing else.”

  Charlie and Wilma exchanged a look. There was no turning Kit aside when she got her claws into a new passion.

  Dulcie said, “She got as excited as if she’d discovered a long-lost sister. And the young cat seemed just as fascinated.”

  Wilma said, “Maybe no one will ever understand Kit-and isn’t that half her charm?” She looked at Joe. “This meeting between Kit and the little waif happened at the same time you came on the murder scene?”

  “It did,” the tomcat said. “So?” He scowled up at Wilma, his white-tipped paws kneading irritably at the chair cushion. “You’re not saying there’s some connection!” Wilma was no more given to flighty imaginings than was he.

  Charlie watched her aunt. “What are you saying?”

  Wilma looked back at them blankly. “I don’t know. The thought just popped into my mind.” She shook her head, frowning. “I don’t know what I meant. It just flashed into my thoughts that, somewhere down the line, you’ll find there’s some kind of connection between the two events.”

  Dulcie looked at Wilma uneasily, and nudged the subject back to Kit and the cream-colored waif. “Since the weather warmed, Kit and Lucinda and Pedric have been walking in the hills, and they’ve glimpsed this cat more than once. Every time she sees them she stands up on her hind legs, staring yearningly a
t them.” Dulcie laughed. “Until Sage hazes her away, forces her to turn back up the hills to the clowder, away from Kit.” Dulcie licked milk from her whiskers. “Looks like Sage has chosen another female who’s just as wild and willful as Kit. Why can’t he find a nice, docile, matronly young cat who will be content to do as he says, and who will be happy to give him lots of kittens? Poor Sage. Where will it end? He’s so…He’s so…”

  “He and Kit weren’t well suited,” Charlie said. She didn’t say that Sage was a wuss, that he wasn’t the macho tomcat who should be destined to love and cherish Kit. But then she looked embarrassed. Who was she to criticize, even in her thoughts, anything about these rare creatures? Finishing her coffee, she rose and picked up her car keys. “I need to stop by the station. I’ve put off telling Max that my clients may have had a break-in. Now, with what may be a murder just two blocks away, I’ll have to tell him.” Leaning down to give her aunt a hug, she headed for the back door. “You cats want to come?”

  “To the PD with you?” Joe said. “We stroll into the station escorted by the chief’s wife? Oh, right.”

  “I’d let you off down the street,” Charlie said, laughing. “But I guess, with the noon traffic, you’d make better time over the roofs.”

  “I guess we would,” Joe said, “and create a lot less interest.” But the tomcat was eager to sneak a look at Juana Davis’s report, and as Charlie headed for her Blazer, he and Dulcie lapped up the last of their milk, shared the remaining cookie, galloped out Dulcie’s cat door and across the garden, headed for the rooftops.

  The detectives wouldn’t have much, yet, on the scene at the Parker house, not until they got some kind of match on any prints they’d been able to lift. But all the same, Joe wanted to see what was happening. Without some kind of official departmental input, he felt at sea about the case, felt left out of the loop. It was this contact with the officers of MPPD and his snooping access to the department’s investigative tools and information sources that served the cats as essential backup for whatever information they were able to discover. Without that supporting data and interdepartmental communication, a cat could work his paws off for nothing. Side by side, Joe and Dulcie leaped to the roof of Molena Point PD, their ever hopeful thoughts fixed on Detectives Dallas Garza and Juana Davis who might, with luck, already have information available for their covert attention.

  14

  POLICE DISPATCHER MABEL Farthy had brought fried chicken for her lunch, with extra servings in case any of the cats wandered in. The plump, blond, middle-aged officer loved to spoil the three freeloaders; she’d be happy to bring fried chicken for the whole department except that, the way these guys ate, she’d have to file for bankruptcy before the end of the week. She was sorting the mail when Joe and Dulcie appeared beyond the glass door. She looked up, smiling. Before she could step out from behind her counter to let them in, Officer Brennan came up the sidewalk and the cats slipped in behind him, crowding so close on his heels that they surely left cat hairs clinging to the dark trousers of his uniform.

  Leaping to the counter, they peered over, sniffing at the shelf beneath where they knew she kept her lunch. The chicken smelled heavenly. When she reached for the bag, Brennan paused, giving her a woeful look. She grinned and shook her head and the portly officer moved on. The cats watched him turn into the conference room where there was always a box of doughnuts beside the coffeemaker, maybe fresh, maybe dried out, but sweet and filling. As Mabel unwrapped their own bite-size treats of fried chicken, down the hall Detective Juana Davis stepped out of her office carrying a CD and headed for Dallas Garza’s office.

  “Take a look at these,” they heard her say as she entered. “We sure did have company this morning.”

  The cats looked at each other, wolfed down their chicken, made a show of stretching and yawning, then dropped off the counter and trotted lazily down the hall as if wanting a noonday nap. It wasn’t easy to want to hurry like hell, yet move as slowly as a basset hound on downers. Envisioning Dallas inserting the disc into his computer, they slipped into his office and out of sight beneath his credenza. They couldn’t see the computer screen from where they crouched-it stood on the detective’s desk with its back to them-but at least they could listen.

  “I’ll be damned,” Dallas said sharply, staring at the screen.

  Juana had pulled up a straight chair next to Dallas ’s desk. “Turn that one back,” she said, frowning at the screen. “There, zoom it up. There, the jawline and ear, just beside that bush. Print it out. Can you make it lighter?” As the cats listened to the soft whir of the printer, Juana said, “There, by the window, behind the camellia bush. Print that one, too.”

  Again the whisper of the printer, and the cats watched it spit out another sheet. When they had seven sheets and Juana was shuffling through them, Joe Grey strolled out from beneath the credenza. Staring sweetly up at her, he leaped to the desk beside her. She was so used to the cats in and out of the offices that she hardly looked at him; she stroked him absently as she fanned out the photos.

  “Try enlarging this one,” she said.

  Another click of computer keys and the printer whirred again.

  “Is that a shadow?” Dallas said, picking up the picture. “Or is he wearing some kind of cap?” In all the shots, even the enlargement, the figure was only barely visible, a shadow among shadows within the tangled bushes.

  “Looks like a cap,” Juana said. “He must have seen me pointing the camera his way when I shot the suntan oil bottle. Did he think he was completely hidden? Or that he’d be out of focus?” She smiled. “But what could he do? He couldn’t move, he was trapped there.”

  And Joe Grey thought, Like a rabbit frozen in place trying to blend in with its surroundings, trying not to be noticed.

  Dallas ran off one more enlargement and took the sheet from the printer. It was as murky as the rest. “Are we looking at the killer?” he said. “Provided there is a body. Why the hell can’t we have a nice simple murder, with a body on the scene?”

  “Plus the murder weapon, prints, excellent witnesses, the works?” Juana said, laughing. “And what fun would that be?” Laying the pictures down, she rose. “I’ll get the film over to George, see what he can get with some high-tech enhancement.”

  “I’ll get the blood off to the lab,” Dallas said. “And the prints we lifted. I don’t-”

  They both looked up when Charlie appeared in the doorway. Joe had been so interested he hadn’t heard her voice up at the front, though she and Mabel usually talked for a while. She stood in the doorway, wisps of her red hair bright as flames in the overhead lights.

  “I just stopped in to see Max for a minute. And to-” She glanced at the pictures. “Are those from the Parker house? May I see?”

  “Come sit,” Dallas said. “Have a look.”

  She sat down on the couch. Dallas handed her the pictures and said, “Someone was watching us while we ran the scene this morning-what appears to be a crime scene.”

  Charlie was quiet for a minute, tilting the pictures this way and that for a clearer view, then she looked up at the detectives. “This could be the same man.”

  They waited. Joe dropped off the desk and slipped up on the couch beside her. She glanced down at him and their eyes met for a moment, then she looked up again at the two detectives.

  “When Ryan and Clyde left you this morning, they stopped up the hill where I was checking my clients’ houses. We were on the street, talking, when Clyde saw a man down the hill standing hidden among the trees as if he was watching us.”

  She looked again at the pictures. “He was wearing a dark hat, a slouchy kind of hat. Jeans. A dark green windbreaker.” Her hand, petting Joe, felt reassuring. They were in this together and that thought pleased the tomcat.

  “None of us got a look at his face,” she said, “with the hat pulled down. He ran down the hill and disappeared, and in a minute a white car took off. Maybe he was interested in my vacationing houses, too. A glass slide
r looks like someone tried to jimmy it. I didn’t report it, nothing seems to be missing.”

  She looked embarrassed. “I guess it wasn’t a very smart way to tail someone, Clyde in a yellow car, me in a red SUV. When we lost him at Ocean, we split up. They went north, I went south as far as the shops, looked all over the parking lot, then gave up.”

  “And you didn’t call about the attempted break-in,” Dallas said, frowning.

  “It was so…I had nothing to report. Even the guy down the hill, watching. Might have been only a neighbor. If he was watching you, wouldn’t he know he’d show up in the pictures you were shooting?”

  “He might have thought I didn’t have a very wide field,” Juana said. “I was shooting small details, a pair of dark glasses, close-ups.”

  “And what was he going to do?” Dallas said. “If he’d moved and we’d seen him, we’d have brought him in for questioning. Maybe we’ll have better luck when the video is developed.”

  “Could this be our snitch?” Juana said. “I took the call, and it was the snitch’s voice, I’m sure. Was he hanging around to see if we’d run the scene even, when there was no body?”

  “That doesn’t tell us how he happened on the scene in the first place,” Dallas said. “The odds of him stumbling on that particular pool…How many people spend their time prowling around vacant houses and looking in empty swimming pools?”

  Juana said, “Unless they saw the murder in progress, or saw the body before it was moved. But why the snitch’s continued secrecy? What’s that about? And how has he known any of the information he’s given us over the years? I’m beginning to think he’s some kind of psychic. If I believed in such things.”

  “Sometimes,” Charlie said, “it seems there’s no other way to explain what he comes up with.” Her hand had tightened only slightly on the gray tomcat. He pressed nervously against her, eased by her steady touch. Sometimes that kind of conversation, hearing the detectives talk about their unknown informant and make guesses about the snitch’s identity while looking straight at Joe himself, tended to make a cat nervous.