Cat Laughing Last Read online

  Nearer to the cats' oak tree, two women stood arguing over a glass-topped patio table that both claimed to have spoken for first. And directly below, a huge-bellied man, stripped to the waist, carried a ruffled, flowered chaise lounge over his head, in the direction of a battered pickup truck. The cats watched a tiny little old lady precariously juggle a glass punch bowl of such proportions that she could have used it for a sitz bath. Maybe that was her plan. Fill it with champagne, and voila, just like the old Harlow movies. The sight of her prompted Dulcie to quote to herself, When I am old, I will wear purple, and bathe in French champagne. She caught her breath when the lady nearly dropped her gleaming treasure, and before she thought, Dulcie reached down a paw as if to offer assistance-but drew back quickly, glancing at Joe with embarrassment.

  No one looked up to wonder what that cat was doing. No one had seen the two cats in the tree or, if they had seen them, no one would imagine their conversation, or dream of the thoughts churning through those sleek feline heads. Their human neighbors would never imagine that cats might discuss human frailties-though they might allow that cats didn't give a damn about human foolishness.

  Of the residents of Molena Point, only four people knew that Joe Grey and Dulcie could speak, that the two cats read the Molena Point Gazette far more perceptively than some human subscribers, that they liked to frequent the village news racks perusing the front page of the San Francisco Examiner, and that when there was nothing more interesting at hand, they watched prime-time TV Only four people knew that Joe Grey and Dulcie were not your ordinary, everyday kitties or that they had, during various criminal investigations by Molena Point PD, not only pointed a paw at their share of killers and thieves, supplying critical evidence to convict the miscreants, but that they had spied as well on any number of villagers, in the comfort of the villagers' own homes. No one knew that, posing as stray kitties, the two were adept at passing on sensitive information to police detectives. Not even Max Harper's own cops, nor Captain Harper himself, knew the identity of their best informants; Joe Grey and Dulcie were far too smooth to blow their own cover.

  But the two cats had other human friends besides the four who shared their secrets. Peering down, they watched three of their favorite senior ladies making their yard sale selections with careful judgment-and with huge dreams. These three women weren't shopping for fun, they were searching out purchases to secure their own futures.

  Mavity Flowers, small and sturdy in her threadbare maid's uniform, perused a display of china and crystal about which, through necessity, she had come to know quite a lot. Cora Lee French, a head taller than Mavity, a lovely, slim Creole woman with graying hair, slipped lithely among tables of needlework and linens, touching the stitching with gentle, experienced hands. And tall, blond Gabrielle Row checked over the clothes that hung on long metal racks, looking not only for resalable bargains, but for anything useful to the little theater costume department.

  Gabrielle was still elegant, despite her sixty-some years. Her short-clipped gray hair was skillfully colored to ash blond, and the cut of her cream blazer was long and lean over her white slacks. Working full-time as seamstress in her own shop, she had for many years been wardrobe director as well for Molena Point Little Theater. And now, frequenting the yard sales, she was not only hunting for costume material but was planning, too, for a time when she would be less active.

  Five ladies made up the Senior Survival Club: Mavity, Cora Lee, and Gabrielle. And Susan Brittain, who was not to be seen this morning, though Susan hardly ever missed a sale. Susan's garage was headquarters for wrapping and shipping the items the ladies sold on the Web. She handled, on her computer, all their eBay sales. The fifth member was Wilma Getz, Dulcie's housemate, retired parole officer, gray haired, in her late fifties. Wilma might be called a silent partner, agreeing with the women's plan, meaning to take part at some future time, but not totally committed.

  The ladies were looking toward buying a communal dwelling that would accommodate them all plus a housekeeper and a caregiver when that time arrived. All of them had some savings, or home equity. And the cats were amazed at how much money they had set aside by hitting the yard sales and selling at auction. So far, it amounted to over ten thousand dollars.

  Senior Survival's plan for mutual security and comfort, in a world of dwindling incomes, increasing taxes, and the possibility of deteriorating health, seemed to Dulcie infinitely courageous, a bold alternative to the ladies' separate interments in retirement or convalescent homes-a plan of mutual cooperation but individual responsibility. These ladies didn't like conventional institutions.

  Slowly the sun slid higher above the hills, slashing through the oak leaves into the cats' faces, making them slit their eyes. Joe's white paws and chest, and the white triangle down his nose, gleamed like snow against his smooth gray fur. As Dulcie backed along the branch, her dark stripes cloaked in shadow, she resembled a small, dark tiger. Only her green eyes caught the light. A breeze fingered into the tree, to rattle the leaves, a chill breath that, by its scent and direction, promised not rain as the marine clouds implied, but a warm day to come. Perhaps only a cat would be aware of the message-how sad that humans, trying to assess the weather, had to read barometers and listen to the questionable advice of some book-educated meteorologist hamming his way through the morning news. Such dependence left one open to innumerable misjudgments in attire-to getting one's head and feet wet; while all a cat had to do was taste the wind and feel in every fiber of his body the changes in barometric pressure.

  The sun was returning to stay, no doubt of that. No more tearing March storms with winds wild enough to jerk a cat right out of his own pawprints. Spring was settling in at last, the acacia trees exploding with brilliant yellow blooms that smelled like honey. All the early flowers were opening. Village cats rolled with abandon in the gardens, and the outdoor cafes were filled with locals and tourists-a perfect spring, in the loveliest of villages. Who needed to travel the shores of Britain and France, Dulcie thought, or trek through Spain and Africa? Molena Point was so beautiful this morning that Dulcie's purrs hummed through the branches like bumblebees.

  But suddenly an unease touched the cats, a foreboding that made Dulcie stiffen and sent a chill twitching down Joe Grey's spine as sharp as an electric shock.

  They studied the crowd below, puzzled and alarmed, their ears flicking forward and back, every nerve on alert, as they tried to figure out what had alarmed them. They were crouched on the branch, wary and keenly predatory, when sirens sounded: a police car leaving the station, they could see beyond the treetops its red whirling beacon heading away through the village, in the same direction where, a quarter hour earlier, an ambulance had departed.

  An ambulance, alone, was not uncommon. It could mean severe illness, a heart attack, the agony of a broken hip. A squad car alone could mean anything-a strayed child, a driver ramming into a tree. But the two vehicles together, the law and the medics, were inclined to mean trouble.

  The cats had crouched to leap away across the roofs to have a look when Joe saw, in the street below, the source of their sudden unease. A growl rose in his throat as a petite young woman stepped out of her black Lincoln. The cats watched Vivi Traynor cross to the McLeary yard, trampling through a flower bed, shoving a child aside as she hurried to the sale tables. She was small and curvy, her black tights, plaid miniskirt, and black sweater clinging, her black hair teased into a bird's nest around her thin face, and held back with a red bow. As she rifled through assemblages of household cast-offs, the village locals, who had not yet seen the author's wife at a yard sale, watched her with interest. A portly tourist whipped out a scrap of paper as if to ask for Vivi's autograph. Did the wife of an internationally famous novelist rate the status of autographs? Certainly Vivi always attracted attention. The couple had been in town barely three weeks, Elliott Traynor having come to oversee a little theater production of his only play, an experimental form that the Gazette called innovative and exciting.r />
  Word had it that Elliott was fighting cancer, that this theatrical production was a project he longed to enjoy while he was still able. The play was set in this area of the California coast where Molena Point now stood, and the musical score had been written by a well-known composer who made his home in the village. The cats watched Vivi wander the garden intently searching-for what? Perhaps looking for some stage prop? Slipping between a stack of used windows and a flowered couch, she performed a theatrical little hip wiggle to ease past a rusty barbecue, then giggled shrilly as she shouldered aside a portly lady tourist. The sight of her made Joe's fur twitch.

  Since their arrival, Elliott Traynor had kept largely to himself as he finished the last chapters of Twilight Silver, the third novel in his historical trilogy. But Vivi had made herself known around the village, and not pleasantly-as if she enjoyed being rude to shopkeepers, as if she took pleasure in being abrupt and demanding.

  The Traynors had not wanted a staff for the cottage they were renting, but had hired the cleaning service provided by Wilma Getz's redheaded niece, Charlie. Charlie tended the Traynor house herself, early each morning, then left the couple to their privacy.

  Molena Point's residents, numbering so many writers and artists, were not put off by Elliott's reclusive ways. They talked among themselves about his books and about the play, waved when occasionally they saw him on the streets or in the black Lincoln, as they headed to the theater; otherwise they left him to his own devices. The presence, alone, of the prestigious writer, seemed adequate enrichment to their well-appointed lives.

  But no one had warmed to Vivi.

  Traynor's previous wife had died three years before. Six months later, he married Vivi, a woman forty years his junior. Besides her loud, rude ways, something else about her made the cats want to back away, hissing, a chill that perhaps only a cat would sense. Whatever reason she had for appearing this morning in the McLeary garden could only, in Joe Grey's opinion, mean trouble.

  3

  The light in Susan Brittain's garage was dim. Standing in the doorway, again peering into the gloom, the first rays of sun striking in past her shoulder, she searched the shadows among the overturned shelves and tables, looking for someone perhaps still crouched there among the ripped-off cupboard doors and scattered empty shipping boxes. An unwound roll of bubble wrap lay twisted across the fallen shelf units like the cast-off skin of a giant snake. Susan could see no one standing silently, waiting for her to enter. Had the vandal been after something he imagined was secured behind the cabinets? Why else would he rip them from the wall? What could he imagine she had, of enough value for him to go to all that trouble? Her instinct was to run, to get away from the house, to call the police from her neighbor's.

  Was the vandal in the house somewhere? Had he broken into her home as well?

  The door from the garage to the breakfast room was closed. She couldn't see whether it had been tampered with, but when she headed further inside to try the lock, Lamb lunged into her path again, snapping at her leg and growling. She backed out of the garage, her hand on his head, grateful for his protection.

  She didn't want to go around to the patio entry. If someone was inside, she would be easily seen through the glass doors of the breakfast room before she could reach the front door.

  Carrying the oversized plastic nursery pot from the side of the house, she stood on it again, to peer through the high windows into her bright breakfast room.

  The cupboard doors stood open, their contents pulled out in a mess on the floor among the overturned dinette chairs, her watercolors jerked from their hooks, and the glass broken, her expensive ceramic pots thrown to the floor, spilling their delicate plants in heaps of black soil. Her heart was pounding so hard she felt faint. Both anger and panic blurred her vision-and fear.

  A man lay sprawled beside her desk, facedown and unmoving, his blood mixed with spilled copier toner, the toner floating on top the viscous red pools like scum on a stagnant pond. She couldn't see his face. What had he wanted? What had happened to him? She owned nothing of great value. Was this simply vandalism, senseless and cruel? Not a burglary at all, but someone mindlessly stoned and intent on destruction, who ended up harming himself?

  Whatever had happened, she felt totally violated, felt far more wounded than she'd ever envisioned when she'd heard about others' break-ins. Reading those accounts, she'd tried to imagine how one would react, but she hadn't had a clue.

  She wondered, sickly, if he had trashed the whole house. Maybe he'd already made off with her TV and CD player, maybe with the few pieces of gold jewelry she kept in the top drawer of her dressing table, then had returned to see what else he could find. Had someone else been here, and hit him? He was very still, though from the way the blood and toner were smeared, it looked as if he had moved, maybe tried to roll over.

  This was the stuff of some lurid movie. She needed the police, she needed someone. Her pride in her independence didn't stretch this far.

  Beside her, Lamb looked up at her with solemn, dark eyes, alert and questioning. Reaching down to stroke him, she tried to reassure herself, to take herself in hand.

  Why had the burglar turned on her computer? Its light shone faintly across the man's body, reflected from the eBay auction lists.

  And was there another vandal? Was he out here in the yard somewhere, watching her? Looking in both directions along the side of the house, she knew she should get away.

  None of this made sense. Could that man in there be lying so still to deceive her, wanting to lure her inside and grab her? Someone who would hurt her simply for kicks? Lamb continued to watch the window, the gleam in his dark eyes hard and alert like a snake ready to strike.

  Certainly, with Lamb by her side, she would be safe going in. If she went inside, she could see better what had happened, could see if the man was dead, then call 911.

  Oh yes, she could do that. And maybe she should take his pulse, she thought, disgusted with herself.

  Hands shaking, she stepped down off the plastic planter and backed away. Pulling Lamb's leash tight, she slipped around to the drive where her car was parked. Unlocking the door, she signaled Lamb to get in. Following him, she locked the door again and used her cell phone, which she kept plugged into the dash, to call 911, her voice shaking so badly she could hardly make herself understood. That surprised her, that she would lose control. She managed to tell the dispatcher there was a man lying wounded in her house, bleeding and possibly dead, that there must have been two men. After she hung up, she wondered if she should back out of the drive, get away from there, even if the car was locked.

  But it wouldn't be long. She would wait in the drive until the police came.

  They arrived within five minutes, a patrol officer-one of two new rookies, she thought. And the new detective from San Francisco, Detective Dallas Garza. She was aware of Garza from her friend Wilma, who knew most of the officers in the Molena Point PD. She wished that Captain Harper himself had come.

  The captain had a terse but comforting way about him. During all that trouble up at the retirement home last year, when she'd been staying there recovering from her car accident, and those people were killed up there, Harper's laid-back, quiet resolve had made everyone feel easier, had kept the elderly residents from panicking. But the department was growing, and Harper didn't go out on many calls anymore.

  Detective Garza was a squarely built, solid man in his late forties, dressed in slacks and a sport coat, his short black hair neatly trimmed, his black Latin eyes unreadable. The uniformed officer with him was young, with dimples and a cleft chin. Susan gave Dallas Garza her house key, and remained in her car with the doors locked, as he instructed, while they cleared the house. Garza had told her to be ready to drive away if anyone came out or if she felt threatened.

  He was in there a very long time. Through her slightly open driver's window, she heard the glass door of the breakfast room slide back, as if they had gone out that way and were looking over
the patio. Then she heard the back patio gate creak open. Beside her, Lamb listened, following every sound.

  Maybe ten minutes later she heard the gate shut again. She sat in the car feeling useless and uncharacteristically frightened. She didn't approve of such fear in herself; she wondered sometimes if this Senior Survival plan was simply a sign of weakness-a gaggle of old ladies who felt they couldn't cope with life alone? Looking over at Lamb, she was mighty thankful to have him. The big poodle, sitting erect in the passenger seat, watched the house as intently as if he could see through the walls. Another police car arrived, parking on the street. Garza came out of the house to confer with the officer, then walked over to her car, looking down at her as she rolled down her window.

  "There's no one in there, Mrs. Brittain."

  "That's a relief. Is the man dead?"

  "There's no one in the breakfast room. There's no body." Garza looked at her carefully. "There's a lot of blood. Detective Davis is on the way. She'll photograph, take samples, and lift prints. Do you want to tell me again what you saw?"

  Her hands began to shake. She couldn't believe what he told her. Reaching to Lamb, she clutched her fingers into his short dense curls.

  "You couldn't have mistaken what you saw? Saw the blood, perhaps, and imagined…?"