Cat Raise the Dead Read online

  It was Clyde who had rescued him from those dark alleys. He'd had a piece of luck landing with Clyde and then the two of them moving down here to Molena Point. Though if he ever admitted to Clyde how much he really did like the village, he'd never hear the last of it.

  "What are you thinking?"

  "That Clyde can be a damned headache."

  She stared at him. "You mean about the Pet-a-Pet program? If Clyde ordered you not to go near Casa Capri, you'd be up there in the shake of a whisker."

  "I wasn't thinking of… Oh, forget it."

  She looked at him unblinking.

  "You're going to keep at it, aren't you? Keep nagging until I agree."

  "What did I say?"

  "Staring a hole through my head."

  "You could at least try."

  He looked hard at her.

  She smiled and licked his ear.

  He watched her warily.

  "They talk to me, Joe. That little Mrs. Rose, she tells me all kinds of secrets. I feel so sorry for her sometimes." She didn't intend to tell him all of Mae Rose's secret, but she'd like to tweak his curiosity ever so slightly.

  He lay down and rolled over, crushing the grass beneath his gray shoulders. Lying upside down staring at the sky, he glanced at her narrowly. There was more to this Casa Capri business than she was saying.

  She patted at a blade of grass. "Those old people need someone to tell their secrets to."

  The cry of a nighthawk swept the moonlit sky, its chee chee chee rising and dropping as the bird circled, sucking up mosquitoes and gnats.

  She said, "Wilma tells them stories:"

  "Tells who stories?"

  "The old people. Cat stories. About the Egyptian tombs and cat mummies and Egyptian hunting cats and about…"

  He flipped to his feet, staring at her.

  "Not about speaking cats," she said softly. "Just cat stories. She's always done story hour for the children at the library. This is no different. Both our visits, after the cats and dogs were all settled down in the old people's laps, when everyone was yawning and cozy, she told stories.

  "She told the little milkmaid cat. You know, There was a little cat down Tibb's Farm, not much more'n a kitten-a little dairy maid with a face so clean as a daisy but she wanted to know too much… And all was elder there and there was a queer wind used to blow there …"

  "Boring. Boring as hell. Probably the old people love that stuff."

  But her look iced him right down to his claws.

  "And why do they need animals to visit them, if Wilma tells them stories? Isn't that excitement enough? You don't want to overtax those old folks."

  She sighed.

  "Get her to read that story by Colette, the one where the cat gets pushed off the high-rise balcony, that ought to grab them."

  She shivered and moved closer to him in the tall grass. They were quiet for a while, listening to the nighthawk and to the far pounding of the sea. But, thinking of Casa Capri, she felt like the little milkmaid cat. She wanted to know too much. She was certain, deep in her cat belly, that she was going to find, like the little milkmaid, that there was summat bad down there.

  She could hardly wait.

  5

  Mae Rose had her good days, when she was able to walk slowly out onto the patio, holding on to the back of the chairs, when she could sit out there enjoying the flowers and the warm sun. But there were days when she was so shaky, when she looked back at herself from the mirror white as flour paste.

  Those days she felt vague and afraid, those days she was too weak to walk at all, and had to be helped not only from her bed and to get dressed, but even into her wheelchair. Those bad days, a nurse wheeled her into the social room and through it to the dining room and helped to feed her, and she felt 120 years old.

  But the times when she woke feeling strong and happy and ready for the day, she felt as good as she had at fifty. Those times she could even sew a little. Of course, she still made the doll clothes-that was nearly all she had left. All her life she'd made doll clothes, even when she was so busy working in wardrobe before the children were born. After the children came she'd left little theater, and that was when she hit on making a business of designing doll wardrobes. James had laughed at her- James had always patronized her-but she'd had a brochure printed up with pictures of her dressed dolls, and she sent carefully stitched samples of her little doll coats and dresses, too. It didn't take long before she was making enough money from her exclusive toy-store customers to dress herself and their three girls and buy the little extras they wanted. James said she spoiled the children. James thought her impossibly childish just because she loved the little, pretty details of life. If that made her childish, she couldn't help it. James said she would have fit better in the Victorian era, when a woman could be admired for choosing to deal only with the minute and the pretty.

  Well she'd raised three children, and not a lot of help from James. He had died when their oldest, Marisa, was only twelve. It wasn't her fault that she hadn't been able to deal with the passions of those children; they were James's children, born and bred. When they got into their teens, and she was trying to raise them alone, it seemed impossible that the little beasts could be her own. The girls' puberty had been a terrible time: she had suffered from too many sick headaches during those years.

  But the girls all got married off at last, and whatever went on in between she had wiped from memory. Now, of course, all three girls lived so far away that they could seldom visit, two on the East Coast with their husbands, and Marisa in Canada on a farm and already five children of her own to worry over. Now that she didn't see the girls except every few years, and now that Wenona, her one good friend, was dead these long years, and Jane Hubble wasn't here anymore, the doll wardrobes were all she had.

  She missed Jane. She missed Wenona. Years ago, when Wenona died, before she, Mae, ever came to live here at Casa Capri, she had known she would spend the last years of her life alone. Wenona had been her only real friend. In little theater all those years together, Wenona in charge of scenery and publicity, and they'd had such lovely times. Their long walks through the village, and shopping together, going up to the city. Wenona had loved to look at fabrics for the doll wardrobes though she didn't sew. Wenona couldn't really love the dolls, not like she cared about cats.

  She had to laugh, the way Wenona always had to go feed the stray cats down at the wharf. As if that were her sole responsibility. And the way she spoiled her own cats, putting in cat doors, buying special food, tramping the neighborhood calling if one of them didn't come home. Always worrying over her cats.

  But then Wenona went on down to Hollywood with a wonderful chance to work in the MGM prop department. She'd thought Wenona would be back, that she really wouldn't like Hollywood, but she had stayed. She came up once a year, and they had a few days together, but then the cancer, very quick, and Wenona was gone.

  And she was alone again.

  Wenona dead. James dead. And her own daughters across the country. When Jane Hubble had come to live here, that was a blessing, but now Jane, too. The nurses said she was over in Nursing, said where else would she be? But she didn't believe them.

  She'd given Jane one of her five dolls before Jane had the stroke-they said it was a stroke. Once she asked a nurse if Jane still had the doll, and the nurse had looked so puzzled. But then she said yes, of course Jane had the doll.

  If Jane had gone away or died, she'd like to have the little doll back again as a keepsake to remind her of Jane. But she didn't ask. They were so strict here, strict and often cross. They took good enough care of you, kept you clean, changed your linens and washed your clothes, and the food was nice, but she sometimes felt as if Adelina Prior's hard spirit, her cold ways, rubbed off on all the staff. There was no one Mae could talk to.

  When she had phoned her trust officer to tell him that she didn't think Jane really was over in Nursing, he treated her as if she was senile. Said he was sorry, that he had talke
d with the owner, Ms. Prior, and Jane was too sick to have visitors, that he saw nothing wrong. Said that the Nursing wing was too busy and crowded with IV tubes for anyone to visit, that visitors got in the way and upset the sick patients.

  Jane would hate it over there. Jane was so wild and full of fun. In that way, Jane was like Wenona. Those years when Mae and Wenona roomed together, Wenona was always the bold one, always making trouble. She would never put up with any kind of rules, from their landlord or from the manager of little theater when she was helping with the sets. And Jane was like that, too, always telling the nurses how stupid the rules were. She made everyone laugh, so crazy and reckless-until they took her away.

  Four times Mae had tried to go over to Nursing to visit, and every time a nurse found her and turned her chair around and wheeled her back. So demeaning to be wheeled around against her will, like a baby.

  Eula said maybe Jane packed up and walked right out of Nursing, even if she did have an attack. Eula was her only friend now. Eula-so sour and heavy-handed.

  She had wanted to tell Bonnie Dorriss, who ran the Pet-a-Pet program, about Jane, but she decided not to. Bonnie Dorriss was too matter-of-fact. That sturdy, sandy-haired, freckled young woman would never believe Jane had disappeared; she'd laugh just like everyone else did.

  Well at least when Pet-a-Pet started, she had the little cat to talk to. Holding Dulcie and stroking her, looking into her intelligent green eyes, she could tell Dulcie all the things that hurt, that no one else wanted to hear. Cats understood how you felt. Even if they couldn't comprehend the words, they understood from your voice what you were feeling.

  Maybe the little cat liked her voice, too, because she really seemed to listen, would lie looking up right into her face, and with her soft paw she would pat her hand as if to say, "It's all right. I'm here, I understand how you are grieving. I'm here now, and I love you."

  6

  This was not a happy morning. Joe's stomach twitched, his whole body ached with sorrow. As he watched through the front window, Clyde backed the Packard out of the drive and headed away toward the vet's. Poor old Barney lay on the front seat wrapped in a blanket, too sick even to sit up and look out the window, though the old golden retriever loved the wind in his face, loved to see the village sweeping by. When Clyde had carried him out to the car he'd looked as limp as a half-full bag of sawdust.

  Early last night Barney had seemed fine, frolicking around the backyard in spite of his arthritis. But this morning when Joe slipped into the kitchen just at daylight, Barney lay on the linoleum panting, his eyes dull with a deep hurt somewhere inside, and his muzzle against Joe's nose hot and dry. Joe hadn't realized how deeply he loved Barney until he'd found the old golden retriever stretched out groaning with the pain in his middle.

  He had bolted back into the bedroom and waked Clyde, and Joe himself had called Dr. Firreti-said he was a houseguest-while Clyde pulled on a crumpled sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Dr. Firreti said to meet him at the clinic in ten minutes.

  Last night Joe'd gotten home about 3:00 A.M., parting from Dulcie on Ocean Avenue so full of rabbit, and so tired from a hard battle with a wicked-tempered raccoon, that he hadn't even checked out the kitchen for a late-night snack. He'd gone directly to the bedroom and collapsed on the pillow next to Clyde, hadn't even bothered to wash the coon blood from his whiskers, had hardly hit the pillow, and he was asleep.

  He woke two hours later, puzzled by the faint sound of groaning. The bedroom clock said barely 5:00 A.M., and, trotting out to the kitchen, he'd found Barney hugging the linoleum with pain. Now at five-fifteen Barney was on his way to the vet, to a cold metal table, anesthetics, a cage, and Joe didn't like to imagine what else.

  He lay down on the back of his private easy chair and looked out at the empty street. The smell of exhaust fumes still clung, seeping in through the glass. From the kitchen, he could hear Rube pacing and whining, already missing Barney. The black Lab hadn't been parted from the golden since they were pups. Joe listened to him moaning and fussing, then, unable to stand the old Lab's distress, he leaped down.

  Pushing open the kitchen door, he invited the big Lab through the living room and up onto his private chair, onto his beautifully frayed, cat hair-covered personal domain. He never shared this chair, not with any cat or dog, never with a human-no one was allowed near it-but now he encouraged old Rube to climb rheumatically up.

  The old dog stretched out across the soft, frayed seat, laid his head on the arm of the chair, and sighed deeply. Joe settled down beside him.

  This chair had been his own since Clyde first found him, wounded and sick, in that San Francisco gutter. Taking him home to his apartment after a difficult few days at the vet's, Clyde had made a nice bed in a box for him, but he had preferred the blue easy chair, Clyde's only comfortable chair. Clyde hadn't argued. Joe was still a pitifully sick little cat; he had almost died in that gutter. Joe had known, from the time he was weaned, to play human sympathy for all he could get.

  From the moment he first curled up in the bright new chair, that article of furniture was his. Now the chair wasn't blue any longer, it had faded to a noncolor and was nicely coated with his own gray fur deposited over the years. He had also shredded the arms and the back in daily clawing sessions, ripping the covering right down to the soft white stuffing. This texturing, overlaid with his own rich gray cat hair, had created a true work of art.

  The old dog, reclining, sniffed the fabric deeply, drooled on the overstuffed arm, and sighed with loneliness and self-pity.

  "Come on, Rube. Show a little spine. Dr. Firreti's a good vet."

  Rube rolled his eyes at Joe and subsided into misery.

  Joe crawled over onto the big dog's shoulder and licked his head. But, lying across Rube, Joe felt lost himself. He was deeply worried for Barney. Barney's illness left him feeling empty, strangely vulnerable and depressed.

  He stayed with Rube until long after the old black Lab fell asleep. He had managed to comfort Rube, but he needed comforting himself. Needed a little coddling. He studied the familiar room, his shredded chair, the shabby rug, the battered television, the pale, unadorned walls. This morning, his and Clyde's casually shabby bachelor pad no longer appeared comforting but seemed, instead, lonely and neglected.

  Joe rose. He needed something.

  He needed some kind of nurturing that home no longer offered.

  Frightened at his own malaise, he gave Rube a last lick and bolted out through his cat door. Trotting up the street, then running flat out, he flew across the village, across Ocean, past the closed shops, past the little restaurants that smelled of pancakes and bacon and coffee, fled past the closed galleries and the locked post office.

  From a block away he saw that Wilma's kitchen light was on, reflected against the oak tree in her front yard. He could smell fresh-baked gingerbread, too, and he raced toward that welcoming house like some little kid running home from schoolyard bullies.

  Galloping across Wilma's front yard and up the steps, he shot straight for the bright glow of Dulcie's plastic cat door and through it, into Wilma's friendly kitchen. The aroma of gingerbread curled his claws and whiskers.

  Dulcie stood on the breakfast table looking down at him, startled by his charging entry. She watched him with amazement, her green eyes wide and amused, her muzzle damp from milk and flecked with gingerbread crumbs. "You look terrible-your ears are drooping, even your whiskers are limp. What's wrong? What's happened?"

  "It's Barney. Clyde took him to the vet."

  "But-not a car accident? He's never in the street."

  "He's sick, something in his middle, hurting bad."

  "But Dr. Firreti will…"

  "He's old, Dulcie. I don't know how much Dr. Firetti can do." He leaped to the table and pressed against her for comfort. She licked his ear and laid a soft paw on his paw. Around them, Wilma's blue-and-white kitchen shone with warmth and cleanliness.

  Above the tile counter, the rising morning light through th
e clean windows lent a pearly glow across the blue-and-white wallpaper and the blue cookie jar and cracker jars. Behind the clean glass of the diamond-paned cupboard doors, Wilma's blue pottery sparkled. Wilma's homey touches always eased him, eased him this morning right down to his rough cat soul. He sighed and licked Dulcie's ear.

  She nosed the gingerbread toward him and bent her head again, nibbling gingerbread and lapping milk from her Chinese hand-painted bowl. Hungrily, he pushed in beside her. Whoever said cats don't like freshly baked treats didn't know much about cats. Not until every crumb had vanished, and every drop of milk, did they speak again. His whiskers and his teeth were sodden with gingerbread crumbs and milk, and he felt infinitely better.

  He knew there was nothing he could do for Barney but wait and hope. He wasn't used to praying, but he did wonder if a cat prayer would be accepted by whatever powers-if indeed there were any powers existing beyond the pale.

  He looked at Dulcie, sitting so regally in the center of the table delicately washing her face. "I thought you took your meals on the rug. When did Wilma start sharing the table?"

  She glanced at her bowl, and grinned. "When I told her you ate on the table. She's not about to let Clyde spoil you more than she spoils me."

  "The house looks nice," he said, leaping down. He didn't usually notice domestic details, unless Dulcie called them to his attention, but Wilma had recently redecorated. Her niece Charlie had helped her paint the walls white and replace the lacy curtains with white shutters. Wilma had sold the thick rag rugs, too, and bought deep-toned Khirmans and Sarouks that were luxurious to roll on. A dozen of Charlie's animal drawings, framed in gold leaf, graced the front rooms, several of Dulcie and even one of himself, of which he was more proud than he let on. The couch had been re-covered in a deep blue velvet as silken as Dulcie's rich fur, and Dulcie's blue afghan lay across the arm just where she liked it; the three upholstered chairs had been re-covered in a red-and-green tweed. And over the fireplace hung a large oil landscape of the Molena Point hills and rooftops, all vibrant reds and greens, done by Janet Jeannot some years before she was murdered.