Cat Striking Back Read online

  She hit the buttons to lower the windows, and began to drive slowly up and down the rows. Crouched on the dash, Joe examined each white car they passed, sniffing the air for fresh exhaust. There were white cars in every row. He sniffed each and peered inside, studying the few drivers who were getting in or out, or who sat listening to music or talk radio, waiting for some more energetic partner to return loaded with parcels and grocery bags. A white-haired woman dozed in a white Buick. A long-haired blonde in a Ford coupe glanced around at them, and turned out to be a man. Watching for a guy in a green windbreaker, Joe thought about Ryan and Clyde heading north on the four-lane, wondering if they’d have better luck.

  They covered the parking lot at a tedious crawl, then Charlie pulled into an empty slot in front of the drugstore. Cuddling Joe under her arm like a little lapdog, she headed inside to walk the aisles.

  They saw no man even close to Joe’s description, and their search didn’t last long once people noticed him. “Oh, look at the kitty!” “Mama, that woman has a cat!” “You take your cat shopping with you? How cute.” Soon Joe’s claws were out, ready to bloody the next reaching hand that tried to stroke him. He could feel Charlie shaking with laughter as they returned to the parking lot.

  “Let’s walk it once,” Joe said. “Behind the cars.” She did that, and Joe sniffed at each trunk seeking the scent of swimming-pool mud or the stink of a dead body. He smelled dust; dirty clothes, as from someone’s laundry on the way to the Laundromat; and bananas and various other food items from recently stashed grocery bags. But no residue of a ripening body.

  “Wild-goose chase,” Charlie said as she stepped back into the Blazer and dropped Joe on the seat. As she started the engine, a stout woman in the next car looked in and smiled, as if pleased to see someone talking to her cat. She pulled away, still smiling.

  Joe said, “Why would he follow Clyde and Ryan from the Parker house? What was so interesting?”

  “Maybe he drove up there to watch me while I checked the empty houses.”

  Joe raised his ears. “You think that was your prowler? The guy who let Mango out? Then he had nothing to do with the murder at the Parker house.”

  “The cleaning crew found a few little things missing in the vacationers’ houses. Or maybe they were only out of place. Not enough to be a burglary, but enough to make me wonder.”

  “Dulcie and Kit and I could have a look. There was a strange smell around the Parker house-besides the body. Almost like catnip, or catmint. If he’s been in those houses…”

  “Did you smell that in the Chapman house?”

  He frowned. “No. But the smell of kittens and cat box, and cat food, can cover a lot of smells. That, and Theresa Chapman’s lemon room freshener. Who knows what we’d find in the other houses.”

  She glanced over at him, wishing she hadn’t brought it up, hadn’t put the idea in his head. She wanted to tell him to be careful, but he hated that, hated to be coddled. “You want to call Ryan and Clyde, see if they had any luck on the freeway?”

  Joe punched in Clyde ’s number. The phone rang once, then went directly to voice mail.

  “Doesn’t have it on,” he growled. Clyde made him crazy when he did that. He tried Ryan’s cell.

  “Flannery,” she said on the first ring.

  “We’re headed back,” Joe said. “Nothing.”

  “Ditto,” Ryan said. “I called Dallas, gave him a description, told him the guy was watching us and maybe watching him and Juana. Anything else you remember, anything you want to add?”

  “Nothing,” Joe said, wishing he’d seen the guy’s face.

  “We’re going on up to look at that vacant ranch,” Ryan said, “then check the remodel, then meet Helen Thurwell to look at the other houses. She wasn’t happy that we had to reschedule. You want to join us?” she said brightly. He could just see her smart-assed grin, knowing how he hated looking at houses.

  “I’ll pass on this one,” he said. All those smells of strange humans and strange animals, of sour clothes and toxic cleaning solutions. Someone else’s empty house wasn’t his territory. If it had no connection to a crime scene, he wasn’t interested in exploring.

  “See you at home,” she said, laughing at him. “Lupe’s Playa for dinner, if we get back early?”

  Joe licked his whiskers at the thought of a Mexican supper. As she rang off, he imagined the yellow roadster turning off the freeway, going through an underpass or over a bridge and taking an on-ramp south again, heading up in the hills above the village to resume their maniacal new obsession of house hunting.

  What good was it, he thought, if Clyde stopped collecting old cars and grew equally involved with old decrepit houses? Both pursuits were, in Joe’s opinion, the human’s mindless and futile attempt to revive and save the known world.

  As Charlie turned down Ocean toward the village, he started thinking again about Juana and Dallas, wondering why they hadn’t made that guy when he’d been spying on them.

  “What?” Charlie said, looking over at him as she slowed at a stop sign.

  “How could they miss him? Down at the Parker place? And if they did see him, why didn’t they arrest him or at least question him?” The more he thought about that, the more irritated he became. It was the first time he’d ever felt anger at a cop, certainly at either of those two.

  “You don’t have much faith in our detectives,” she said, pulling away from the stop sign. “Maybe they didn’t see him, with all the overgrown bushes and tall fences. Even the best officer might miss someone completely hidden, Joe. Maybe he slipped inside a house. Maybe…” She was silent a moment, turning onto her aunt Wilma’s street, then she reached to stroke his back. “Don’t be cranky. That guy might have been just some nosy neighbor, we might have gotten all excited for nothing.” She pulled to the curb in front of Wilma’s cottage. “If that guy was the housebreaker-or was your killer-dispatch has his description. Maybe one of the units will pick him up.”

  Wilma Getz’s stone cottage stood beneath spreading oaks, with not a bit of lawn in front. A deep, richly flowered garden spread away to the house. The roof was dark slate, slippery to the paws when wet with rain, warm as a stovetop beneath the summer sun. In the window of Wilma’s living room, they could see Dulcie looking out, lashing her striped tail, and Joe brightened at the sight of his tabby lady. Her paw was lifted, her green eyes intent on him. Charlie watched them, and smiled. In spite of the human scum one encountered, one could always find honesty and truth among the animals-and find wonder. The world was an exciting place when you knew its secrets, when you could share in a feline miracle as real and amazing as a little speaking cat lifting her paw in greeting.

  Stroking Joe and picking him up, Charlie got out of the Blazer and headed inside. In her arms, Joe wriggled with impatience, then leaped down, racing ahead to the cat door.

  12

  HE SAT IN his car above the deserted ranch feeling shaky. Why had those people followed him? What did they know? What had they seen? But maybe they didn’t know anything. How could they? Maybe they just hadn’t liked him standing down there in the bushes watching them. Though it would take someone really paranoid to get mad about such a little thing, get mad enough to follow him. He might have just been down there pruning bushes or gardening. That was his neighborhood, what he did there was none of their business.

  They couldn’t have seen him earlier when they stopped to talk to those two detectives, he’d been too well hidden in the dense bushes between the houses, and with the corner of the house hiding him. But the house had blocked the cops’ voices, too, so he hadn’t heard much of what they’d said.

  The cops had been doing something back by the pool, but hell, they couldn’t know anything.

  Unless someone had seen him, early this morning? He daren’t think that someone saw him last night as he loaded her into the trunk. Maybe some neighbor thought they saw something, a shadow moving around, maybe glimpsed his car pulling in or out of the drive, but they couldn
’t have seen anything, really. It was too dark.

  Sure as hell, some crazy suspicion wouldn’t be enough to bring the cops. If someone had seen him and recognized him-everyone knew him in this neighborhood-the cops would have come straight to his house. Maybe someone saw a shadow or heard some little sound last night, maybe thought it was some homeless guy fooling around at the empty house, trying to get in. And this morning they’d woken up thinking about it and decided to call the law. Maybe that’s what this was about, maybe he was worrying for nothing.

  Except for the hose, he thought nervously. Except for the water halfway up the drive. That had drawn that detectives’ attention.

  But what could they make of that? It was just a hosed-down driveway.

  No, whatever they might imagine, he’d done too good a job of cleaning up for them to find anything to worry him; he was just having an attack of nerves. Most likely the cops were out on some crank call, just looking around. Small, quiet village like this, maybe they had nothing better to do and he didn’t need to fret.

  But those people in the yellow roadster. Lucky he’d overheard them talking about looking at houses, heard where they were heading. They might help him out, big time, and never be aware of it.

  Could you believe that damn woman chased him, on foot? Running down the road like a crazy? And then their car tailing him right onto the freeway? That kind of nosiness put him in a rage. He didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.

  But what did it matter? He’d heard enough, and he was still laughing because he’d been able to follow them so slickly. On the freeway he’d slipped away from the yellow roadster into a tangle of trucks, had cut over two lanes between trucks, cut back into the right lane again, and gone down the next off-ramp. And had swung around onto the rise above the freeway where he’d waited until he saw them pass below, moving fast in the middle lane. That roadster was the only yellow car on the road, top down, with the dark-haired woman. What a laugh, trying to tail him in that. When he saw them, he’d swung back down to the on-ramp and pulled onto the freeway behind them as they headed back south.

  He’d followed them off the freeway, staying behind a delivery van. Had stuck with them as their car wound back among the Molena Point hills, sure that if he followed them long enough they’d lead him to exactly what he was looking for. Maybe the empty ranch they’d talked about, isolated and unoccupied. A barn, a hay barn, outbuildings…What more could he want? He could dig the grave in privacy, completely unobserved.

  Following them along the narrow roads, he’d stayed well back, and then had taken a higher road that ran parallel, where he could look down on them. He’d watched with growing interest as they reached the empty ranch and pulled in. Not a soul in sight, no vehicle or farm animal, not even a stray chicken. He’d slowed, pulled the car behind some trees, thinking that once he was rid of the body, he’d take care of the original job the way they’d planned it. Maybe do it that very night. Change vehicles, follow the same routine just the way she would, and he’d be out of there and on his way.

  Below him, the couple sat in their car looking down the steep hills as if assessing the nearby properties and small acreages. He could have waited and found this place himself from the way they’d described it, but that would have taken time. He’d have to go into the village, get a copy of the local paper, check the real estate section. That could take hours, and then he’d have to drive these hills for hours more, scanning the roads looking for the rural address of the deserted property. He didn’t have the patience, he wanted to get it over with, and he was beginning to feel pushed. The sense of her back there under the blanket was like she was still alive, lying there watching him. And then the picture changed abruptly. Suddenly he saw not her back there, he saw the cat crouched in her place, the pale cat watching him, the cat his mother’d brought home when he was a boy, the pale cat, its eyes ablaze with rage.

  She’d brought home a half-grown kitten, all snuggled down in its blanket in a cardboard box, a kitten she said would be his. He hadn’t feared cats then, when he was small, and he’d liked the kitten fine. It was soon tagging around after him and begging at the table, and it liked to sleep on his schoolbooks. It would come up on his bed, too, to sleep with him at night, snuggling up to him, purring.

  But then it started sleeping with its face in his face, pressing its nose against his nose. Snuggling up to his face and to his warm breath. He hadn’t liked that, he’d push it away but it would come right back-come back at him real fast, pressing against his face and nose, its body shaking with purrs. That had frightened him, that frenzied purring. He’d knock it off, knock it to the floor, but it would be right back again. If he shut it out of the room, it would claw at the door and yowl. His mother said to be nice to it, it was only a kitten and it loved him.

  It might have loved him, but even after he shoved it off the bed over and over, it came back pressing against his nose, its body rocking with frantic purrs, demented, insane kind of purrs. He had no idea what was wrong with it and he didn’t care, he just wanted to be rid of it. He didn’t think or care that maybe it had been taken from its mother too soon or maybe was only trying to get warm. He just wanted it gone. He began to avoid it during the day. It was always there watching him but, because he’d knocked it away so many times, it wouldn’t come near, would just back away, watching him. And still, no matter how angry he got and how he shoved it, every night it came onto his bed and pressed its nose to his nose, so he couldn’t sleep. It was impossible to keep it out. His mother wouldn’t put it outside the house at night. She said he was being silly, that the poor little cat loved him, and that it was dangerous to leave a cat out at night.

  He grew more and more desperate and angry until, one cold night when the young cat was pressing hard at him, breathing from his face, he’d grabbed it off him, held it out away from him so it wouldn’t scratch, and flung it as hard as he could at the bedroom wall.

  It hit the wall hard and fell and lay still. He’d gotten out of bed and knelt there, immediately sorry for what he’d done. Its eyes were open, staring at him. He’d tried to feel it breathing but he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel its heart beating. It was still as stone. He’d crawled back in bed and lain there, cold and shivering.

  When he woke in the morning the cat was still there, lying in the same position and growing stiff. He’d shoved it under the bed behind some boxes, and crept away to school. That afternoon when he came home, he told his mother he’d found it like that, that it must have died in the night, maybe died from some kind of seizure.

  Long after his mother had buried the cat, he kept seeing it; he would see its eyes watching him. It was about that time that he began to read Edgar Allan Poe, and he became obsessed with “The Black Cat.” It was that story, combined with what he’d done, that shaped for all time his sick disgust of the creatures.

  After he married, he’d hidden his dark obsession from her for all their seventeen years. She liked cats, she brought cats home, and he, with hard resolve, had managed to tolerate them. Because he loved her. Because he wanted her to stay with him. Because he thought secretly that if he forced her to choose, if she knew the truth, she would turn away from him. That she would choose the cats.

  In every other way, they were well suited. When they planned their jobs, they turned out to always be successful. When they celebrated afterward, she was bright and happy and loving, and life was perfect. Because of her cleverness and attention to detail, they always got away smoothly. In this, they were the perfect couple. It was only her preoccupation with the cats that unsettled him. Even her penchant for sunbathing was nothing, at first, was only an annoyance.

  Who would imagine that was how it would end? With her stupid need to take off her clothes in public, to sunbathe in the raw.

  Down the hill below him, the couple got out of the roadster and went off among the buildings. He was well hidden up here, he’d parked high above the place under a bushy eucalyptus tree where he’d never be seen. Taking a
pair of binoculars from the glove compartment, he sat studying the empty barn and outbuildings, the empty corrals. The day was warming up. He thought sickly that the body would be ripening, and he felt a cold sweat start, across his chest and forehead.

  He tried to take himself in hand, tried to breathe deeply, but he had to use the inhaler. When his breathing eased, he concentrated on the empty barn, thought about burying her in there, deep under the dirt floor. This old place could stand empty for years, the way the real estate market had fallen off. Might be decades before she was found, and maybe never. He wanted to get on with this, get it over with. The recurrent fear in his chest and belly made him hunch over the steering wheel. He told himself that her death wasn’t his fault, that maybe it wasn’t all her fault, that maybe it was an accident. Only an accident. And yet something within him knew that it was more than an accident that had made her fall.

  What would have happened if he’d called the cops right away? Told them it was an accident? But when he imagined telling that to a cop, fear shook him. What cop would believe that, would believe she’d accidentally fallen, that he hadn’t shoved her?

  Anyway, it was too late now, he’d run away, and he’d moved the body.

  Down the hill, the couple appeared from the outbuildings and walked around the outside of the empty house looking up at the windows, then standing still as if studying the structure. They knelt down to inspect the foundation, and the dark-haired woman dug into it with a screwdriver, then lay a level up against the sides of the house almost like she knew what she was doing. She was a good-looking broad, maybe thirty-something, dark brown bouncy hair, nice shape in those tight jeans.

  He thought about the women he’d had while she was alive and she’d never guessed, never had a clue. She’d been good friends with some of them, and no hint of her knowing. And what harm? The others were simply challenges, the value in the taking and then moving on.