Cat Cross Their Graves Read online

  Uncle Hal always wanted to see her schoolwork, too. Or wanted her to play numbers games and do puzzles. At first she'd liked that. But Pa would make him stop, Pa didn't like those games. And that made Mama mad. Mama said, "What's wrong with her being smart? Why are you so set against a girl being smart? What if she were a boy?" Pa said it wouldn't make no difference, and then they'd fight and she, Lori, would go in her room and turn on her little radio loud and read a fairy tale that ended up happy.

  Now, hurrying along the sidewalk staying in a crowd of people, she looked across at a shop window where a shadow moved, then jerked away suddenly behind the china and glassware. Fenner? She stopped for only an instant to look, but now there was nothing. Two women inside; she saw no one else. Hurrying across the library garden and in through the library's front door, she glanced back at the street. When she didn't see him, she slipped into the children's room.

  The librarian was starting story hour. He didn't dare come here, among the children. She sat down on a floor cushion beside the crowded window seat, leaned against its cushioned edge beside the dangling feet of a four-year-old who was in turn snuggled up to an older child. She looked at the kind face of the librarian and listened to her quiet voice, and slowly she let the story take her away, saw the goats and the mountain and the grandfather and let the story become real, let the ugliness fade away until it was gone. Almost gone. He couldn't get her here, not in this safe place.

  27

  Jack Reed's house stood five blocks below the home of the senior ladies, and Genelle Yardley's, but seven blocks over the crest of the hill, closer to the sea. The two cats, leaving the seniors' garden and Drs. Hyden and Anderson to their dig, stopped only once, when a yapping terrier chased them. Spinning to face the frenetic animal, they smiled, and Joe Grey lifted an armored paw. The little dog stopped. Dulcie flattened her ears and crouched to spring. The dog backed up a step. Joe's burning yellow eyes and Dulcie's poison-green gaze made the terrier tremble right down to his hard little paws. Tucking his tail between cringing haunches, he moved back three steps more, let out a screeching challenge, then spun around and beat it out of there yipping for human protection.

  Enjoying his retreat, the two cats smiled at each other and trotted on through the crowded backyard gardens, their path following the rocky ridge that began in Genelle's garden. An outcropping that ran for half a mile, cresting the hill in a ragged, stony spine. The yards through which it thrust were, for the most part, planted to enhance its sculpted curves. The ridge ended across the street from Jack Reed's bungalow, in an unbuildable jutting shoulder of stone. The cats paused among the boulders. They had seen this house many times, and they had never liked it.

  None of these homes had much front yard, and little more backyard. A second row of roofs could be seen close behind them. The house was stark, forbidding, without any of the welcoming air of a beloved retreat, like most of the village cottages. Against the front of the one-story gray frame, with its dull-brown trim, was a line of dead or dying shrubs. The rest of the yard, where there might once have been flower beds, was covered with brick-colored gravel uglier than a parking lot.

  The concrete driveway was empty, and Jack's white pickup with its neat side boxes and "Vincent and Reed" logo wasn't parked on the street. The two cats, padding up the concrete drive to avoid the gravel, stood for a moment assessing the windows and vents, looking for the easiest route of entry.

  The foundation vents were so big that Lori could have gotten out through there, if ever she'd found a way down from the house above. The cats circled the house, but all seven vents were nailed shut. Slipping along between the bushes, they leaped up to the sill of the garage window and peered in.

  No room in there for a vehicle; the place was stacked with cardboard boxes of clothes and other items spilling out, castoffs that looked too old and tired even to give to charity. The window itself was new and clean but nailed shut, a dozen nails angled into the inside molding.

  "What kind of man is this?" Joe Grey said irritably.

  "Paranoid."

  "All this to lock in one little girl?"

  "Nutcase."

  "You think he hurt her?"

  "She's never said that, and she talks to me a lot. When Genelle asked her if he'd done anything ugly, any kind of touching, Lori said no. That she'd heard all about those things from the other kids in the foster homes." She turned to look at him, the late-morning light catching across her green eyes and peach-tinted ears. "She's really afraid of going back to those foster places. I think, if she trusted the foster-care people, she would have called them, gotten some help."

  "But help from what? What did he do to her?"

  She turned on the branch. "He locked her in, Joe! Nailed the windows shut! How would you feel? You detest being locked in! Took her out of school, and she loved school. She was a prisoner!" Leaping from the narrow sill into the oak tree that towered above them, she trotted along a branch to examine an attic vent.

  It was stuck tight. She examined the other vent on that side, then leaped to the roof and across it, into another oak. There appeared to be two vents on each side. All were stuck, but no new nails were visible. These vents were too small for a child to get through, and who would fear that a cat might enter or even want to. It was not until they were pawing at the last vent that they were able to rattle the wooden grid.

  Pressing harder, then pulling with hooked claws, they loosened the hinges in the rotting frame where it had succumbed to dampness and maybe termites. Digging in harder, Dulcie flung herself backward on the branch, pulling with all her might- just as she would jerk a giant rat from its hole. The grid flew off, nearly taking her with it. In midair, she fought her paw loose, snatching at the branch. Teetering, grabbing for balance, she watched the grid spin away to the ground. She realized only then that Joe had his teeth in her shoulder, a mouthful of fur and skin to keep her steady. Turning, ignoring the pain from his teeth, she gave him a whisker kiss.

  Joe released her and leaped to the edge of the hole, peering in. Dulcie edged up beside him. The attic was black and stunk of dead spiders and insects and mouse droppings, filling Dulcie with visions of black-widow spiders and the brown recluse arachnids and surly raccoons waiting in the dark to defend their lair. She wanted no truck with raccoons, better to face tigers. In Molena Point, raccoons were so well protected by the do-gooders of the village that they had grown unnaturally bold. Pet dogs had been attacked in their own yards, and just this winter, raccoons had badly bitten not only several family dogs but two different women, and a child, who tried to rescue their screaming pets. And only a few blocks from the Reed house, she and Joe and Kit had barely escaped a predatory band of raccoons in just such a black attic as this. That escapade had ended with gunshots. Dulcie still woke from nightmares in which she and Joe and Kit had been blown away instead of the raccoons.

  "Dulcie?" Crouched on the branch beside her, Joe nosed at her impatiently.

  She flicked an ear at him.

  "You going to hang there all day? Is there a problem?"

  Fixing her back claws in the molding, she gave a tail lash and bolted into the unknown dark, onto a soft surface that gave unpleasantly until she realized it was a matt of dust-embedded fiberglass insulation between two rafters. The faint echo as she scrambled in implied that the attic was empty, she didn't even hear mice, though her nose tickled with the smell of dry mouse droppings and the leavings of generations of squirrels. She was peering around her as Joe landed behind her. "Go on, Dulcie. What is the matter?" He pushed hard against her. She moved on hesitantly, picking her way along a rafter and watching through the blackness for the trapdoor that every house must have to give access to the attic-praying that wasn't nailed shut.

  It would be just their luck if Lori's pa was at home after all, lying motionless on the bed below them, as Lori had described.

  Morosely staring up at the ceiling just where she and Joe might emerge. This was, after all, the weekend, when most folks didn't
work. Maybe he'd loaned his truck to someone.

  But, she thought, it was only Saturday. Contractors did often work on Saturday, catching up on an ever more demanding building market. Maybe he was on some extensive job or some difficult old remodel, or maybe, hopefully, deep into a tangle of ancient, frustrating wiring that would take him the better part of the day. She watched Joe leap across the rafters searching for a way down, his white nose, chest, and paws in the blackness seeming disembodied.

  "Here," he said softly. "Here it is. Come on, Dulcie, shake a paw."

  Leaping after him, she crouched beside him at the edge of the trapdoor. His head was bent over the plywood square, his ears sharply forward, listening to the house below.

  When they had listened for some time and had heard nothing, he clawed at the edge of the door. He was able, just barely, to wiggle it in its molding. "Come on, Dulcie." He turned to look at her, his patience wearing thin. "I've never seen you so reluctant."

  She'd seldom felt so reluctant. All Lori's unhappiness in this house seemed to have collected like a chill around Dulcie's own heart, and she didn't want to go down there.

  Well, the trapdoor was probably bolted, anyway. Padlocked maybe, from the inside. She set her claws in, and on his count of three, she jerked upward.

  The door lifted an inch, then dropped back.

  Again they listened, Joe as still as a snake about to strike, Dulcie's heart pounding.

  When the house remained silent they tried again. With their back paws well under them, and their front claws deeply engaged over the lip of the door, Joe whispered, "One, two, three, heave."

  The door flew up-but then dropped back again, forcing some swift paw work to leap clear.

  On the next try, they were able to lift it far enough to get their shoulders under it. Cats were not built for this stuff, for using their bodies like wedges. But they heaved, heaved again, and finally with their backs under it, the rest was kitten play. A last heave and the door fell backward onto the rafters. They flew cringing away, out of the sight of anyone below.

  But they saw then why the door had given.

  "We pulled the hasp out," Joe said, amazed.

  Dulcie stared at the softer wood where the hasp had pulled loose. Splinters had flicked off, scattering on the carpet below. When there was no sound, when the house remained as still as death itself, they crouched on the edge, looking down.

  Below them down the dim hallway, they could see a living room at one end and next to it a kitchen. Along the hall were four narrow doors that probably led to a bath and three bedrooms. All the doors stood ajar. The rooms beyond were dark. The place reeked of stale air. They could see, inside the door to the farthest bedroom, stacks of newspapers and an unmade bed that even from this distance smelled of unwashed human. Glancing at Dulcie, Joe dropped the eight feet to the worn carpet, his heavy landing causing a muffled thunk. Dulcie, flehming at the smells, dropped down beside him, her legs and shoulders jolted by her landing. And, staring high above her at the attic crawl hole, which was now unreachable, she felt her courage drained away. Without a ladder or a tall piece of furniture, they were not going back out that way. And maybe, with the windows all boarded up, there was no other way out. Crouching on the stained carpet, breathing in the stale smells, Dulcie was filled with the terror of being trapped, unable to escape, a feeling so debilitating that it turned the little tabby cold and weak.

  28

  In the children's reading room, Lori had concealed herself as best she could, tucked up among the pillows at the end of the window seat. Story hour was over. She had fetched a book from the shelves and was pretending to read, holding the book in front of her face, glancing out the library window every few minutes watching for the beetle man. The children's librarian was right there at the desk, and another librarian at the circulation desk, two more in the reference room, so she felt safe enough. Ms. Wahl did not come looking for her, and no one said anything to her. She guessed Ms. Wahl didn't really care about what Cora Lee had said, or hadn't believed Cora Lee. Being a grown-up didn't automatically make you real smart, or turn you into a nice person.

  Beyond the glass, the library's peaceful garden made a strange contrast with the turmoil in her mind, with the dark shadow of the beetle man, and with worry over what had taken Cora Lee away. Then, when she did read a few pages, the pictures in her head of Harry Potter were equally dark, all among the gloomy caverns.

  And when she looked up suddenly, she saw him. The beetle man, standing across the street. Standing inside the door of the china shop, his back to her, standing in shadow and talking with someone inside.

  Pressing deeper among the bright pillows, she was mostly hidden behind the wall where it met the window. She could see him gesturing, his hands making stiff movements. She didn't know whether to slip away again, out of the library, to run again, or to stay where she was. Stay here and watch him, see what he would do. It would be worse not to see him, not know where he was. He was waiting for her to come out; why else would he be there in a china shop?

  Mama would always stop at a china shop window and stand dreaming, setting in her mind some lovely pattern of plates and silver, imagining them laid out on an embroidered cloth. She and Mama, they ate their meals on Melmac and flowered oilcloth-pretty oilcloth, though, and pale-yellow Melmac. But not china and linen like Mama loved. Their silverware was from the Greenville Woolworth's. He was coming out, turning to look straight across to the library window. Cringing deeper into the cushions, she was telling herself she was safer here, when she saw Pa. Saw his white truck coming around the corner. "Vincent and Reed" on the side. Pa driving real slow, looking out at the street. "Oh!" she said aloud, sucking in her breath.

  The librarian looked up, startled. Lori smiled quickly and held up the thick copy of Harry Potter. "I'm sorry," she mouthed in silence. The librarian smiled at her and nodded-she was the children's librarian, she loved Harry Potter, too. She understood how you could get caught up in that world and forget your own. How you could get lost in a world so you just shouted out when you didn't mean to.

  Out on the street, Pa had slammed on his brakes and swung out of the pickup, right in the middle of the street with all the cars stopped behind him. Pa ran across, Pa, tall and thin, reaching and grabbing the beetle man by the shoulders, swinging him around.

  The beetle man fought him, trying to get away. Pa had on his dark uniform jacket with the red-and-white "Vincent and Reed" emblem on the pocket, his brown hair slicked down under his baseball cap. He shook the beetle man, shouting at him so violently that people crossed the street to get away. Any minute, someone would call the cops. Pa's anger scared her, and excited her, too. Pressing hard against the glass, she watched him shove the smaller man into the cab of his white truck, Pa still shouting in his face as if threatening him. Pa slammed the truck door. The man cowered, crouching down as Pa went around the front, watching him, and swung into the driver's seat. Pa pulled away in a chirp of tires. In a moment they were gone, turning away at the next corner.

  Pulling the pillows closer around her, she felt hot, then ice cold. She wanted with all her heart to believe that Pa had come to find her and protect her.

  But why would he care, after he'd kept her a prisoner? If Pa hated the beetle man, he hated her, too. He didn't care for no one. She longed to be down in her cave alone but she couldn't go there now in the middle of the day. When she looked back across the street, she saw a cat on the roof of the china shop. Dulcie?

  But no, it wasn't Dulcie. A little dark cat, though. This cat had long fur and was darker than Dulcie, with a huge fluffy tail lashing, really comical. It stared down from the gutter, looking after Pa's truck.

  It was the cat that had saved her, had chewed her ropes and freed her. Sliding off the window seat, she wanted to run out to it. She was safe now from the beetle man and from Pa, she felt suddenly so free she wanted to race into the street shouting and spinning cartwheels, she could run across to the little cat, she could race away u
p the street, free.

  But first she had to get her backpack, in case she might not come back. She didn't think about what Pa might be doing to the beetle man, she didn't want to know. She waited until the children's librarian rose and headed for the reference room, then she crossed to the stairs. Hurrying down the half flight to the basement, she paused beside the workroom door, looking in, making up an excuse to go in there, feeling bolder than she ever had.

  There was only one librarian, with her back to Lori. Lori watched her, puzzled, then alarmed.

  The thin, blond woman had pulled the little bookcase aside and was sweeping up bits of broken brick scattered across the floor. Lori watched her edge the bookcase out farther and peer around it. Where Lori had always fit the bricks neatly into the hole, now they stuck out all ragged, with big gaps, bricks every which way. Someone had been there, someone…

  Had the beetle man come here last night, before he found her? Come in through the basement window, through her window? He must have followed her, known she was hiding in the library. Then had come in at night in the dark after she left, thinking to find her alone in the middle of the night. To find her where, if she cried out, there would be no one to hear her? That thought filled her with a fear far deeper than when he tied her up and locked her in that house.

  That time, he hadn't touched her in a bad way. And she'd thought there might be neighbors close, thought if she had to, she could yell. Had thought if she could escape she could come back here to the library, to her own hiding place, and be safe. But all the time, it wasn't safe? All the time, he'd known about the basement?

  And there in the beetle man's room, tied up in that chair, she'd been more mad than scared. Deep, cold angry, Mama would say. But now she was only scared, now that he'd found her cave she was real scared. He knew her one last secret, her one secret place to hide.