Cat Fear No Evil
Authors: Shirley Rousseau Murphy
A Joe Grey Mystery
For Pat.
And for a pair of black feline brothers who were
kinder and more simpatico than Azrael:
Fluffy, who ate crackers and cheese in bed with me.
And Scrappy, who warned me of a prowler outside my
open window when I slept alone on a summer night.
The wonderful thing about the cat is the way in which, when one of its many mysteries is laid bare, it is only to reveal another. The essential enigma always remains intact, a sphinx within a sphinx within a sphinxâ¦. My own belief is that cat was created to encourage us to dreamâ¦. Like poets, cats lead us along the margins of the everyday, visible world. By following in their footsteps we can slip behind the looking glass, to find, as often as not, that the reflection in the mirror is our own image. He who knows the cat surely understands himself a little better.
âR
OBERT
D
E
L
AROCHE
,
The Secret Life of Cats
During the first week of October, when an icy windâ¦
The cold wind off the sea blew up Joe's tailâ¦
It took the rest of the waning night for Clydeâ¦
The party was in full swing, the champagne flowing, theâ¦
Joe lay across Clyde's shoulder absorbing the warmth from hisâ¦
Charlie's late supper party was long over, the guests departedâ¦
Dawn had not begun to bloody the sky when Azraelâ¦
The yellow-and-white Victorian cottage stunk so powerfully of gas thatâ¦
The body had been taken away. On the trampled frontâ¦
Late September rains had turned the hills above Molena Pointâ¦
The only luggage the black tomcat required was a canvasâ¦
Kate stood at the kitchen window waiting for her kettleâ¦
Long after Kate slept, that Saturday night, down the coastâ¦
In the Getz house, the kit slept safe and warm,â¦
Kate Osborne didn't learn about Lucinda and Pedric's deaths untilâ¦
Belting into the alley, Joe found Dulcie and the kitâ¦
On a rocky point just at the south edge ofâ¦
The five freshly cut oak logs in the fireplace wereâ¦
The shadows of night seemed reluctant indeed to tuck themselvesâ¦
The roof of the courthouse reflected bright moonlight, offering noâ¦
Crossing the sidewalk quickly to the passenger side of herâ¦
In the presence of the two officers, Kate was foolishlyâ¦
By ten that night, the fog had packed itself asâ¦
The ringing phone woke Charlie. She was alone in bed,â¦
The Garden House Hotel had once been a pair ofâ¦
The time was 9:30, the morning sun burning off theâ¦
Marlin Dorriss's condo was in the Marina District with aâ¦
The binoculars had been Joe's idea. Clyde had to admit,â¦
Streaking between the complex of condo buildings and up theâ¦
The women's accessory department of I. Magnin smelled subtly ofâ¦
D
uring the first week of October, when an icy wind
blew off the Pacific, rattling the windows of Molena Point's shops, and the shops, half buried beneath blowing oaks, were bright with expensive gifts and fall colors, residents were startled by three unusual burglaries. Townsfolk stopping in the bakery, enticed by saffron-scented delicacies, sipped their coffee while talking of the thefts. Wrapped in coats and scarves, striding briskly on their errands, they had left their houses carefully locked behind them.
Burglaries are not surprising during the pre-Christmas season when a few no-goods want to shop free of entailing expense. But these crimes did not involve luxury items from local boutiques. No hand-wrought cloisonné chokers or luxurious leather jackets, no sleek silver place settings or designer handbags. The value of the three items stolen was far greater.
A five-hundred-thousand-dollar painting by Richard Diebenkorn disappeared from Marlin Dorriss's oceanfront home without a trace of illegal entry. A diamond
choker worth over a million vanished from Betty and Kip Slater's small, handsome cottage in the center of the village. And the largest and hardest to conceal, a vintage Packard roadster in prime condition was removed from Clyde Damen's automotive repair shop, again without any sign of forced entry.
Police, searching for the 1927 Packard that was valued at some ninety thousand dollars, combed the village garages and storage units, assisted by Damen himself. They found no sign of the vehicle. Police departments across the five western states were alerted to the three burglaries. Now, three weeks after the events, there were still no encouraging reports, and police had found little of substance to give detectives a lead. And Molena Point wasn't the only town hit. Similar thefts had occurred up and down the California coast.
With most of Molena Point's tourists gone home for the winter, and local residents settling in beside their hearths in anticipation of festive holidays, the disappearance of the valuables made people nervousâthough certainly the victims themselves were above reproach. All three were law-abiding citizens well known and respected in the community. Clyde Damen ran the upscale automotive repair shop attached to Beckwhite's foreign car dealership. He took care of all the villagers' BMWs and Jaguars and antique cars as if they were his own children.
The owner of the Diebenkorn painting, Marlin Dorriss, was an urbane and wealthy semi-retired attorney, active on the boards of several charities and local fund-raisers. Betty Slater and her husband, Kip, who reported the diamond choker missing, ran the local luggage-and-leather shop and were long-time residents
who traveled to Europe once a year and gave heavily to local charities.
Both residences and the Damen garage had alarm systems. All three systems had been activated at the time of the thefts, but no alarm had been set off. Considering this, the citizens of Molena Point thought to change the locks on their doors and to count the stocks and savings certificates in their safe deposit boxes in the local banks.
When there was a lull in the thefts for a few days, people grew more nervous still, waiting for the next one, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But maybe the sophisticated thief had moved on, tending to the similar thefts along the California coast. All California police departments were on the alert. The newspapers had a field day. However, Molena Point police captain Max Harper and chief of detectives Dallas Garza offered little information to the press. They pursued the investigation in silence. The MO of the thief was indeed strange.
In each instance, he left all valuables untouched except the single one he selected. In the case of the diamond choker, he had ignored pearl-and-ruby earrings, a sapphire bracelet, and five other pieces of jewelry that together totaled several million dollars. In the theft of the painting, only the Richard Diebenkorn landscape had disappearedâit was Dorriss's favorite from among the seven Diebenkorns he owned. And Clyde Damen's Packard was only one of twelve antique cars in the locked garage, several of them worth more than the Packard.
Clyde had purchased the Packard in rusted and deteriorating condition from a farmer in the hills north of
Sacramento, who was later indicted for killing his grandfather. It was now a beautiful car, in finer shape than when it had come from the factory. Just before it disappeared, Clyde had placed several ads in collectors' magazines preparing to sell this particular treasure. At the time of the theft, the gates to his automotive complex had been locked. The lock and hinges did not appear tampered with, nor had the lock on the door that led to the main shopâClyde's private shopâin any way been disturbed. The deep-green Packard with its rosewood dashboard and soft, tan leather upholstery and brass fittings was simply gone. When Clyde opened the shop very early, planning to spend the morning on his own work, the space where the Packard had stood beside a half-finished Bentley was empty. Shockingly and irrefutably empty. A plain, bare patch of concrete.
Before calling the cops Clyde did the sensible thing. He locked the shop again and went out into the village to find his housemate, a large gray tomcat. Finding Joe Grey trotting along the street headed in the direction of the local deli, Clyde had swung out of the car and rudely snatched him up. “Come on, I have a job for you!”
“What's with you!” Joe hissed. “What the hell!” He had been headed to Jolly's Deli for a little late snack after an all-night mouse hunt. He was full of mice, but a small canapé or two, a bit of Brie, would hit the spotâthen home for a nap in his private, clawed-and-fur-covered armchair.
“I need you bad,” Clyde had said. “Need you now.”
At this amazing announcement, too surprised to argue further, Joe had allowed himself to be hoisted into
Clyde's yellow Chevy coupe and chauffeured around to the handsome Mediterranean complex that housed Beckwhite's Foreign Car Agency and Clyde's upscale automotive shop. Joe was a big cat, muscled and lithe. In the morning sun, in the open convertible, his short gray coat gleamed like polished silver. The white triangle down his nose gave him a perpetual frown, however. But his white paws were snowy, marked with only one stain of mouse blood, which he had missed in his hasty wash. Standing on the yellow leather seat of the Chevy, front paws on the dashboard, he watched the village cottages and shops glide by, their plate glass windows warping in the wind. His whiskers and gray ears were pinned back by the blow. His short, docked tail afforded him a singular profile, like that of a miniature hunting dog. He had lost the tail when he was six months old, a necessary amputation after a drunk stepped on it and broke itâClyde had been his savior, rescuing him from the gutter, taking him to the vet. They'd never been apart since.
Clyde pulled up behind the shop, unlocked the back shop door, and slid it open. “Don't call the station yet,” Joe said, trotting inside. “Give me time to look around.”
But, prowling the scene, he found not the smallest detail of evidence. Not even the faintest footprint. No scent, no smell the cops could not detectâexcept one.
Just at the edge of the bare concrete where the Packard had been parked, he caught the smell of tomcat.
Staring up at Clyde and growling, he crouched to sniff under the remaining cars. The scent was far too familiarâthough it was hard to be certain, mixed as it
was with the smell of oil, gas, and fresh paint. All of which, Joe pointed out to Clyde, were death to cats.
“You won't be breathing them that long. You've only been in here three seconds.”
“Three minutes. It doesn't take long to damage the liver of a delicate and sensitive feline. You're buying me breakfast for this favor.”
“You had breakfast. Your belly's dragging with mice.”
“An appetizer, a mere snack. Are you asking me to work for nothing?”
“Kippers and cream last night, with cold poached salmon and a half pound of Brie.”
“Half an
ounce
of Brie. And it was all leftovers. From your dinner with Ryan. Actually from Ryan's dinner. She's the only one whoâ”
Clyde had turned on him, scowling. “She's the only one who
what
? Who pays your deli bill when you have your goodies delivered? May I point out to you, Joe, that no one else in Molena Point has deli delivered to their cat door.”
“The deli guy doesn't know it's the cat door. I tell themâ”
“What you
tell
them is my
credit card number
. If I weren't such a sucker and so damned kindheartedâ”
“I just tell them to leave it on the porch. Why would they suspect the cat door? What I do with the delivery after they leave can't concern them.”
“
No one
else in the world, Joe, pays his cat's deli bill.”
“No one else in the worldâexcept Wilma Getzâlives with a cat of such impeccable culinaryâ”
“Can it, Joe! Tell me what else you smell. Not
merely some wandering neighbor's cat that probably came in yesterday when the garage doors were open. Can't you pick up the scent of the thief? If
you
can't track him, no one can,” Clyde said with unexpected flattery.
But in fact Joe could smell nothing more. He wondered if perhaps the thief had worn gas-and-oil-covered shoes to hide his own scent. And if he had, why had he?
Maybe he thought the cops would use a tracking dog? But Molena Point PD didn't have any dogs, tracking or otherwise. Everyone in the village knew that.
Or did the thief hide his scent because he knew about Joe himself? That thought was unsettling. Nervously he watched Clyde call the station.
By the time three squad cars pulled up, Joe was out of sight in the rafters. He stayed there observing from the deepest shadows, watching Detective Garza photographing and fingerprinting, listening to him question Clyde, Garza's square, tanned face serious, his dark eyes seeing every detail. Officers lifted prints from every available surface. They went over the shop inspecting every car. They examined both the front and back entrances. The thief sure hadn't taken the car out through a window. Nor did it appear that he had entered that way. Best bet was, he knew the combination to the back door's state-of-the-art numerical lock, or was very good at lock picking. The prints that did not belong to Clyde or to one of his mechanics would be duly checked. Garza would do his best to obtain prints on the prospective buyers who had answered Clyde's ad for the Packard. Only after the officers had left, a matter of several hours, did Joe pick up the scent of af
tershave around the big double doors, a splash of Mennen's Original that likely was left by one of the cops, a brand so common that half the men in the village might be wearing it. But then he found the scent down the alley as well, along with a faint breath of diesel fumes.
“I think Garza's right,” Joe said. “I think they loaded the Packard on a truck bed.” Detective Garza had found a partial tire mark farther down the alley, the track of a large truck in a bit of dust out near the street. He had photographed that and had made a plaster cast. Garza did not wear Mennen's Original.
The upshot was that, except for the scent of tomcat that continued to worry Joe, he found nothing else that the cops missed, and that fact deeply annoyed him.
“You're starting to think you run the show,” Clyde said. “That the law can't function without you.”
He only looked at Clyde, he need not point out that he and Dulcie and Kit were the best snitches the department had. That they had helped Molena Point PD solve more than a few burglaries and murders. That the evidence they had supplied had allowed the city attorney to prepare for solid convictions, that many of those no-goods were presently enjoying cafeteria meals, free laundry service, and big-screen TV supplied by the state of California. He need not point out to Clyde that Max Harper and his officers did not make light of the anonymous information that was passed to them by phone. They no longer questioned the identity of the callers, they took what was offered and ran with itâto the dismay of those criminals subsequently prosecuted.
But now, as Joe prowled the rooftops long after mid
night, it was not only the theft of Clyde's Packard roadster and the other high-class burglaries that bothered him. The identity of the elusive tomcat whose scent he had detected in Clyde's garage continued to prod at him. As did the problem of Dillon Thurwell.
Fourteen-year-old Dillon was deep into some kind of rebellion that, because she was Joe's good friend and a friend of Joe's human friends, worried everyone. Cat and human alike were amazed at her sudden change of character, at her angry defiance toward those she had seemed to loveâyet no one could blame Dillon's anger on her age or on crazy hormones; her sudden rage at life was more than that. The unexpected disruption of her seemingly close and solid family had been a shock to the village. Who would have imagined that Dillon's quiet, businesslike mother, who seemed to manage her home life and her real estate work with such happy efficiency, would suddenly be slipping deep into an affair with one of the village's most prominent bachelors? Because of this, Dillon had changed overnight from an eager and promising young woman to a surly, smart-mouthed teen running the streets at all hours as she had never doneâor been allowed to do. Dillon's sudden apparent hatred for herself, and for everyone she had cared about, deeply frightened Joe.
Beneath the bright half-moon Joe stalked the roofs fussing and worrying as only a sentient cat can, as only a catâor a copâwith a compulsion for asking hard questions can chew on a puzzle. As above him the moon and stars glinted sharply in the cold black roof of the sky, the three problems racketed around in his head like fast and elusive ping-pong balls tossed out by
some demonic tease: Dillon; the scent of a tomcat that did not belong in the village; and the mysterious burglaries.