Cat Fear No Evil (16 page)

He was pretty sure of the dates, though who could keep every burglary and every date in his head? The more he looked, the more he thought that the numbers did indeed match. The excitement made his skin ripple and his tomcat heart pound.

So what was he going to do now? Haul all the bills away with him, down the stairs, out the glass door, and around the house in the snatching wind, then drag them across the village in broad daylight?

Well, of course he was.

And of course Marlin Dorriss wouldn't miss the contents of these files. Particularly when, the minute he opened the drawer, there would be the empty file folder sagging like an abandoned mouse skin.

He studied the fax machine that stood beside the phone. Could he fax the bills to Harper, then put them back in the file?

But that operation, if he faxed all of them, could take hours. And were faxed bills adequate evidence for the judge to issue a search warrant?

Digging deeper back in the drawer he found files for previous years' taxes, each year carefully marked, each containing similar bills, credit card on top, phone bills at the back. Dorriss was so beautifully organized that Joe wanted to give him a medal.

Lifting a packet of paid bills from an earlier year, he dropped it into the front file in place of those he had removed. Voilà. Who would know? Unless of course
Dorriss had reason to refer to his recently paid bills. Digging a large brown envelope from the drawer of paper supplies, he pawed the bills into it, and worked the two-pronged fastener through its punched hole. Clawing the fastener closed, he tried not to think about possible tooth marks on envelope or bills. He was pushing the file drawer closed with his shoulder, bracing his claws in the carpet, when he heard a door open in the house below, and the breeze through the slightly open window accelerated as if in a wind tunnel.

Directly below, footsteps rang across the entry tiles, a man's heavy and hurried tread. Joe heard no voice. Dorriss didn't call out as if there was anyone else in the house—if it was Dorriss. The hard footsteps moved toward the stairs and started up, muffled suddenly by the thick runner to a faint brushing sound.

Gripping the heavy envelope in his teeth, lifting it free of the floor so as to make no sound, thus nearly dislocating his neck, he hiked the package across the hall to the nearest guest room. There on the thick antique rug he hastily dragged his burden under the bed; no dead rat or rabbit had ever been more cumbersome. Beneath the bed he paused, startled.

Now he smelled cat.

Tomcat?
The scent of cinnamon was too strong to be certain. And the aroma was combined with the nose-twitching stink of a woman's perfume.

Helen Thurwell's perfume? But what kind of affair was this, if she occupied a guest room? Sniffing again at the expensive scent, he thought it was too heavy to be Helen's. Whose, then? Another of Dorriss's lovers, taking her turn when Helen wasn't available? He could hear Dorriss coming softly up the carpeted stairs. He
hoped to hell the window above the bed was open. He could feel no movement of air, no breeze slipping in fingering under the bed.

This room would look down to the front entry, over the angles and juttings that faced the street, over descending roofs and ledges that should give him a quick passage to freedom—if he could get out. Listening to the approaching footsteps, he caught, over the numbing perfume, a whiff of Marlin Dorriss's distinctive aftershave, an aroma he had never smelled on any other human, that he had never encountered on the village streets; only those few times when he had happened on Dorriss in a patio or shop. Maybe Dorriss had it blended just for himself. The lawyer's soft footsteps on the thick carpet turned into the master bedroom.

Joe was about to slip out and check the window above him, when the sounds from the bedroom gave him pause. Stone sliding across stone? Wood scraping stone and wood? Dorriss coughed once, then Joe heard the heavy
clunk
of thick metal.

A safe? Was that why the desk wasn't locked? Whatever Dorriss wanted to keep private was locked away behind a wall of metal? Joe listened to papers being shuffled, then the scrape, again, of stone on wood. Then Dorriss moved into the dressing room; Joe heard the unmistakable snap of a briefcase or suitcase, then the slide of a zipper.

Leaving the brown envelope under the bed, he slipped out and padded down the hall into the master bedroom, watching the partially open door to the dressing room where papers still rattled. He could see, on a luggage stand, a black leather suitcase lying open. Dorriss stood over it, putting in folded clothes. On the
stand beside the suitcase lay a sheaf of papers, and atop the papers a black automatic. A clip and a box of bullets lay beside it, the sight of which sent ripples of alarm through the tomcat.

He'd had enough of guns. His hearing hadn't been the same since he and Dulcie played moving target in the attic above Clyde's shop, chased and shot at by counterfeiting car thieves, and Clyde tried to rescue them. That was three years ago, part of that little caper during which he and Dulcie discovered their powers of speech, and their lives had so dramatically changed. The shock of seeing one human murder another had brought out latent talents in them that they had never suspected. One of those thieves had been Kate Osborne's husband, Jimmie, who subsequently took up residence at San Quentin.

Now, looking at the gun, he considered leaving the Dorriss house at once, even without the evidence.

Oh, right. Marlin Dorriss was going to shoot an innocent cat that happened to wander in? Dorriss must like animals, if he'd left the glass door open for some household kitty.

The more specific implication of that open door Joe did not want to think about.

Worrying only briefly about his own gray hide, wondering only briefly which of his nine lives he was living at the moment, Joe waited until Dorriss turned away, then slipped past the dressing room door deeper into the bedroom.

Creamy, hand-rubbed walls greeted him; a pastel Persian rug over blackish stained hardwood floors; a seating alcove arranged with a charcoal leather love seat and chair before a dark marble coffee table.

At the other end of the room stood a king-size bed with a pale brocade spread and a dull, carved head-board and matching nightstands. On the wall opposite the fireplace, next to the double dresser, stood a huge armoire inlaid with ivory, an antique cupboard that would be large enough to hold both a small bar and a thirty-inch TV. But it was the fireplace that held Joe's attention.

A portion of its ornate paneling stood open and a steel safe loomed within, its steel door also wide open.

Rearing up, Joe could see nothing inside. Before he could leap up for a better look he heard Dorriss coming. Diving under the bed he watched Dorriss's black oxfords cross the room, heard him slam the safe closed, heard the little clicks as he turned the dial to lock it.

Joe watched Dorriss return to the dressing room, then came out from under the bed again and began to check out the room.

The tops of the carved night tables were empty. These roughly made chests with their dull unpolished wood looked handmade and expensive, perhaps pieces that Dorriss had imported from South America.

Rearing up, he could see two dark, flat items on the dresser. Leaping up and miscalculating, he hit the small plastic folder, sliding so hard he nearly went over the edge. He froze, listening, sure that Dorriss had heard him.

When the sounds of packing continued, he guessed not. Examining the folder, he found it was a little loose-leaf booklet designed to hold a dozen or so photos of one's dog or cat or baby, depending on the holder's preference, each photo protected within a clear little pocket.

These pockets held credit cards.

Laying a silent paw on the slick plastic, Joe felt far more elated than if he'd discovered a warren of fat rabbits. Studying the cards, he found examples from half a dozen credit card companies, each card issued in a different name. Behind each card in the same little pocket was a white file card containing an address and phone number, social security number, birth dates, and a woman's name. A mother's maiden name, that universal code for certain identification? And, best of all, a driver's license issued to the cardholder, each one bearing Marlin Dorriss's photograph. Joe was so pumped he wanted to shout and yowl.

But even this prodigious find was not the most interesting. Next to the credit card folder lay what might be the real kicker, the veritable gold mine. For a moment he just stared. Then he started to grin; he could feel his whiskers tickling his ears. Right here beneath his paw was the ringer. The first-prize trophy. He heard again Dulcie's description: a small notebook with a mottled reddish-brown cover and a black cloth binding.

The notebook still smelled faintly of gas, of whatever substance PG&E put into their natural gas supplies so users would know if there was a leak in the line. Joe was reaching a paw to flip through the pages when he heard Dorriss coming back again, the scuff of his shoes on the dark hardwood. Joe had only time to leap from the dresser to the top of the armoire, where he crouched as flat as a pancake hoping he was out of sight. But then when Doris approached the dresser, he couldn't resist, he slipped to the edge to watch.

Picking up the notebook, Dorriss flipped through it as if reading random passages; the expression on his
face was one of deep rage. Glowering at the open notebook, he ripped it in half. Ripped it again, then tore each half straight through the offending pages.

Scooping up the stack of torn pages, he moved to the fireplace. From the top of the armoire Joe stared down at Dorriss, his heart doing flips.
As sure as queens have kittens, he's going to burn those pages.

Dropping to the bed behind Dorriss and slipping silently to the rug, Joe began to stalk the man. He wanted that notebook, he wanted those little mysterious pages that could be, that his cop-sense told him were, hard and valuable evidence to the death of James Quinn.

T
he five freshly cut oak logs in the fireplace were artfully
crisscrossed over the gas jet. Marlin Dorriss, dropping the torn pieces of the notebook on the raised hearth, turned to find a match or, more likely, Joe thought, some sort of mechanical starter. As he reached into a small carved chest that stood at the other end of the hearth, Joe slipped silently behind him.

Closing his teeth on the wadded remains of the notebook he was gone, a gray streak disappearing under the leather love seat. It wasn't the best place to hide but it was the closest. If Dorriss came poking, Joe hoped to slip out at the far end. Once concealed, he carefully spit out the pages so as not to drool on the evidence, and crept to the edge of the love seat where he could see his adversary. He hoped he had all the bits of paper. The notebook cover still lay on the hearth, the slick brown cardboard bent and twisted, victim of Dorriss's rage.

Dorriss turned, reaching for the notebook. He stared at the hearth and searched the carpet and into the fire
place, frowning and puzzled. He stared around the room, then moved swiftly to the dressing room and bath, looking for an intruder. Joe could hear him banging the glass shower door and the closet doors. The next minute he flew into the study, then out again and down the hall. Joe heard him swerve into the first bedroom.
Not under the bed! Oh please God don't let him look under the bed and find the bills! Cat God, human God, I don't care. This is a bona fide feline supplication. Please, please, please don't let him look under that bed.

But why would he look there? The guest beds sat low to the floor. The frames that held the box springs were no more than six inches high, not enough space for a burglar to hide—at least, not for the kind of burglar Dorriss would have in mind. Joe heard the closet in that room slide open, then Dorriss was in the hall again searching the other bedrooms, banging open closet doors. Immediately Joe fled for the guest room and under the bed.

Fighting open the metal clasp, he shoved the notebook pages in. Laboriously, with an impatient paw, he managed to fasten the flap again. Next time around, he'd like to have opposing thumbs. Down the hall, Dorriss was making more and more noise, searching, then pounding down the stairs apparently to search the rest of the house—but he'd be back. Slipping out from under the bed, leaving his burden for the moment, Joe scrambled up to the sill.

There was no breath of air behind the closed shutters; no window was open. Balanced on the sill, he challenged a shutter's latch with frantic claws. But when he'd fought it open, the window behind it was not
only closed, but locked. From the stairs, he heard Dorriss coming.

The lock was a paw-bruiser, invented by designers who had no respect for feline needs. He heard Dorriss turn into the study, heard him opening the desk drawers—maybe wondering what else the thief might have taken. Joe's paws began to sweat, slipping on the metal lock—and he began to wonder.

If, as unlikely as it seemed, the downstairs glass door had been left open for one black tomcat, if against all odds the opportunistic Azrael had somehow partnered up with Marlin Dorriss, Dorriss might well be knowledgeable enough to be looking for more than a human thief. Frantic, Joe could hear him shuffling papers.

By the time he got the lock open and slid the glass back, he was a bundle of nerves, and his paw felt fractured. Dragging the heavy brown envelope up to the sill, he balanced it against the glass. As he pulled the shutter closed behind him, he heard Dorriss coming out of the study, heard Dorriss pause at the door as if looking in. Joe wondered if his gray fur made a dark smear behind the closed white louvers? Or if the shutter humped out of line where he crouched? He wondered if cats were subject to sudden coronary occlusion? He was ready to leap out into space clutching the envelope, calculating how best to negotiate the twisting angles to the lower roof, when the phone rang.

Thank you, great cat god or whoever.

Dorriss let it ring twice, but then he crossed the hall to answer. Joe knew he should jump at once, but for an instant he remained still, listening.

“I can't talk now,” Dorriss was saying, “there's someone in the house.” Joe heard a sharp metallic snap, as when a bullet is jacked into the chamber of an automatic.

“I can't
talk
now. You're where?”

Pause. Against all good sense, Joe remained listening, gripping the envelope in his teeth.

“What the hell are you doing there? What the hell made you take off? Call me back, I can't
talk
.”

Silence, then an intake of breath. Then, “You're telling me the truth?”

Pause. Then, “All right, get on with it. That's very nice indeed. Then you need to get back here. I told you not to play these games with your little friends.
They've
made a mess, and you'll have to clean it up. I don't want any more of your childish pranks, I can't afford to deal with that stupidity, and I won't have it rubbing off on me. Get back here fast, my dear, and take care of this.”

A soft click as Dorriss hung up. Joe crouched on the sill, his teeth dug into the envelope, adjusting his weight-and-trajectory ratio, eyeing a lower roof. With the extra baggage, if he missed his mark he'd drop like a rock, two stories to the stone terrace.

But he didn't want to toss the envelope, let it fall and maybe split open, spill the evidence all over Dorriss's front yard, to be snatched and sucked away in the sea wind.

He took a deep breath and was airborne—airborne but falling heavily, his usual buoyancy gone. His ability to twist in the air had deserted him. He felt like a rock, a flung boulder. Falling, he was falling…

He landed on the little roof scrabbling with frantic claws, five feet to the left of the window and five feet below, coming down with a thud that shook him clear to his ears.

But he was all in one piece and, more to the point, so was the envelope. He was poised to jump again when a sound to his right stopped him. Made his blood turn to ice, made him search the low roofs.

A dark little gargoyle stared up at him. Crouched on the edge of the tiles, Kit watched him wide eyed, but then stared suddenly past him at the window above, at the sill he had just abandoned. Her voice was a terrified hiss.
“Jump, Joe! He's coming! Jump! He's opening the shutters! Jump now! Drop that thing and jump!”

 

Earlier that morning, the kit had seen Joe Grey heading for the police department as she prowled the roofs alone thinking about Lucinda and Pedric, mourning them, deeply missing them. Wandering the peaks and shingles feeling flat and sad, she had seen Joe Grey below, galloping up the sidewalk, headed somewhere in a hurry. Coming down, she had followed him and when he galloped through the courthouse gardens, of course she had followed. But then he turned and saw her, and instead of his usual friendly ear twitch, inviting her to join him, he'd given her a hiss, a leave-me-alone snarl, and had cruelly sent her away again. Or he thought he had.

Slinking away through the bushes hurt and angry, she had turned when he wasn't looking, and followed him to the front door of the PD. Had watched him slip inside on the heels of the judge's secretary. The tall
blonde, delivering a sheaf of papers, took no notice of the gray tomcat padding in behind her. The kit wanted to follow, but he'd been so cross she daren't. And then only a minute later a delivery boy hurried up the street carrying a big white bag of takeout that smelled of pastrami and made her lick her whiskers, and she had watched the dispatcher buzz the boy through.

Joe Grey had gone in there to share the captain's lunch and had sent her away alone. Feeling incredibly hurt and sad, and mad too—all claws and hisses—she didn't even want to beg lunch by charming some likely tourist in one of the sidewalk cafés as she so often did. She felt totally alone and abandoned. She had no one. Lucinda and Pedric were gone forever. And this morning, Dulcie had rudely slipped off without her. And now Joe Grey didn't want her. How cruelly he had driven her away.

All alone, with no one to care about her, she climbed to the roof of the PD and hunched down in the oak tree. There she waited for nearly an hour angry and lonely, until Joe Grey came out again. But then, leaving the station, he was not licking his whiskers, he did not look happily fed. He looked so gaunt and hungry himself that
that
made her feel better. Much better.

She watched him crouch in the geraniums drinking hungrily from an automatic bubbler that watered the courthouse gardens, then he took off fast, heading across the village. The kit followed. Joe was so interested in wherever he was going that he paid no attention now to who might be behind him. He was all hustle, dodging people's feet and up trees and across roofs, his ears pricked, his stub tail straight out behind. She trailed him five blocks to Ocean and across Ocean
among the feet of tourists and on again to the fine big house that looked like a museum from the front and was all glass at the back.

Sneaking low and carefully the kit had followed him around the side of the house and saw him go in through an open glass door. Hiding in the shadowy bushes that grew among the boulders, she watched him enter that big house through an open slider. Was that door open for
him
? He sniffed the door, then went right on in, as bold as if he lived there. When he had gone inside she pressed her nose against the door, looking.

Joe had disappeared. She peered into the room, then she followed her nose. Joe's scent led across the huge big room that had brightly colored caves all around, all elegantly furnished, so many places to play and to hide. She investigated one fascinating niche then another, rubbing and rolling, racing across the backs of the couches and trying her claws in the brocade. Sniffing leather and velvet, exploring every single object in every single room, she never did find Joe Grey. At last she approached the stairs.

But looking up that broad, angled flight, the kit stopped and backed away. What was up there? Joe had been up there a long time. What was he doing? She had heard no sound, no thump of paws, and she was frightened. She was standing undecided, looking up, when she heard a car park out in front, heard the car door open and close, then a man's footsteps on the stone terrace. Quickly she hid behind the closest chair, crouching against the thick, soft velvet.

The kit knew Marlin Dorriss. Didn't everyone in the village know him? He was a philanthropist, whatever that meant, and a womanizer. She knew what that word
meant. Wilma said he was usually circumspect in his personal life and that meant quiet and careful like a hunting cat. Except he wasn't circumspect about Helen Thurwell. Marlin Dorriss was tall and slim, with a lovely tan, beautiful deep brown eyes, and short-clipped white hair. Handsome, and kind looking.

But as he crossed the big room and headed up the stairs where Joe Grey had gone, she felt afraid.

She couldn't race up the stairs past him to warn Joe. But she could slip out, and around to the front, and maybe, if she could gain the angled roofs and ledges, she could get inside.

Scooting through the bushes to the front of the house she clawed and scrabbled her way up bits of wall and across slabs of roof, looking above her for an open window—and then suddenly above her, a window
slid
open.

And there was Joe Grey. She saw his white paw slide the glass back, saw him press between the glass and the shutter with a huge packet in his mouth. He remained so for some time, staring back into the room. Then he crouched as if someone was coming and leaped into space twisting to land on a roof below. Above him, Marlin Dorriss appeared; she could see him at the next window. She choked back a cry. Joe stared down at her.

“Jump,”
she hissed.
“He's coming! Jump! He's opening the shutters! Jump now! Drop that thing and jump!”

Then everything happened at once. Dorriss closed the shutters and turned away, and Joe leaped to the next angle with the brown paper bundle, then leaped again to the concrete. The bundle split open just at the edge
of the bushes. In the wind, papers began to flap and dance. Kit had never seen Joe move so fast. Grabbing a mouthful of papers he pulled the package under the bushes and was back again snatching up more. The kit leaped.

And she was beside him snatching pieces of torn paper from the wind. Had Dorriss turned back? Was he looking? Had he seen the package fall before Joe snatched it away? The kit could not see Dorriss now, his silhouette was gone from the window—but then there he was standing at another window looking out.

Surely he couldn't see them beneath the bushes. Had they caught all the papers? Like catching swooping birds from the rooftop. The kit stared at the papers under her paws. “What is all this?”

“Evidence,” Joe said, pushing little bits of paper back into the torn envelope, trying to fold it around the ragged mess. Kit helped him stuff papers in. Pressing the envelope into folds with their paws they gripped it between them, their teeth piercing the heavy paper as they tried to hold it together. And when Dorriss turned away, when the windows were clear once more, they dragged it out from the bushes and away.

Keeping to the shadows along the sidewalk, they tried to shelter their burden from the wind. It was a long way to Joe's house, and already the package was heavy. Trying to find a rhythm together, falling into an unwieldy pace, eight paws attempting to move in harmony, they hauled their burden through an empty alley and along the less-frequented backstreets. Kit's head was filled with questions which, with her mouth full, she couldn't ask.

The envelope grew heavier with every step. The
wind died as they left the shore, and that helped. But the day grew muggy hot. Kit wanted to stop and rest but Joe didn't pause, pushing on from shadow to shadow and from bush to bush. When a human appeared far down the street they dragged their burden under a porch or behind a fence.