Cat Fear No Evil (5 page)

It was amazing to Charlie that since moving to the village, she had acquired three close woman friends her own age, trusted friends even besides her aunt Wilma. She had never had girlfriends in school, had always been a loner. She hadn't known how comfortable and supportive female friends could be—if they were women who didn't fuss and gossip, who liked to do outdoor things, who liked animals and liked to ride. Women, she thought amused, who preferred an afternoon at the shooting range to shopping. Though Charlie had even begun to enjoy shopping, when she had the spare time.

She could never get over the fact, either, of her sudden success as an animal artist. After giving up a commercial art career at which she had been only mediocre, and moving down to the village to open a cleaning-and-repair service, she had suddenly and without much effort on her part been approached by a gallery that loved her work. Her animal drawings and prints had been warmly accepted in the village and far beyond it, in a way almost too heady to live with. Even Detective Garza, that very discerning gun-dog man, had commissioned her to do his two pointers, and she considered that a true compliment. She watched Garza start through the crowd now, as if to speak to Max; she supposed the detective would take Max away from her. The square-faced Latino looked very handsome in a pale silk sport coat, dark slacks, white shirt, and dark tie, particularly as she was used to seeing him in an old, worn tweed blazer and jeans. She could see a tiny
line of pale skin between his short-trimmed dark hair and his tan.

Easing through the crowd to them, Garza gave her a brief hug and turned his attention to Max. As Max squeezed her hand and moved away with him, Charlie turned toward the curator's desk where Anne Roche, the Doberman woman, had made herself comfortable in one of the two leather chairs.

Anne was a frail, fine-featured woman, cool to the point of austerity. Everything about her spelled money: her glossy auburn hair sleeked into a perfect shoulder-length bob, her creamy complexion and impeccable grooming. Her easy perfection made Charlie uncomfortably aware of her own freckles and kinky, carrot-red mane. Anne was interested in a portrait of her two champion Dobermans. Anne's looks might be intimidating, but her love of animals and her shy smile put Charlie immediately at ease. She spent some time telling Charlie how much she loved her work, particularly the quick action pieces.

“And the cats,” Anne said, her brown eyes widening. “Some of your cats look so perceptive they make me shiver. And your foxes and deer and raccoons—so wild and free. Those aren't zoo animals.”

Charlie laughed. “I watch them from our porch and from the kitchen windows. We live up in the hills above the village, so there's open land around us. The fox comes almost every night, though we don't feed him.”

“Well, he's very fine. I have to say, your work is the best I've seen, and I'm quite familiar with the drawings of Pourtleviet, and of Alice Kitchen. Have you thought of producing a book? A coffee-table book?”

Charlie smiled. “I do have a small project in the works, not a coffee-table book, but with cat drawings.”

“I'm glad to hear that. I wish you well with it. When can we get together for some sketches of the dogs? I'd like you to do them on the move, at least for the first work, some of those wonderful quick sketches.”

They were discussing a time convenient to them both and were going over Charlie's fees when the waiter who had approached Kate so rudely, and who had eyed Charlie's barrette, started toward the desk with a tray. He was young, maybe thirty, dressed in white jacket, black slacks, and black bow tie. His stark blond hair topped a perfect tan, as if he surfed or played tennis. Maybe a sports bum working as a waiter to support his habit? His handsome, tanned face was closed of any expression, withdrawn and bland. But as he held out his tray of champagne, his look changed to one of surprise.

He crumpled and fell suddenly, dropping the tray, scattering glasses in a spray of champagne, landing hard across Charlie, hurting her leg as she fought to steady him and herself. It happened so fast she couldn't hold him. His weight twisted them both as he slid from her grip to the floor, pulling her with him; she went down in a tangle of sprayed wine and breaking glass.

He lay white and still beneath her. He had made no sound as he fell, no cry of distress or pain. As Charlie untangled herself and felt for a pulse, Max was beside her pulling her away, his lean, lined cop's face frightened, his demeanor stern and quick. “Get back, Charlie. Get away from him. Now.”

Charlie struggled up, her gold sheath soaked with wine, and she slid fast behind the desk as Max's offi
cers herded everyone back. Max knelt beside the tall, liveried man feeling for a pulse, feeling the carotid artery, turning back the man's eyelids. Around them the din of voices had stopped as suddenly as if a tape had been turned off, the crowded room so still that the running footsteps of the two officers who had moved to secure the front of the building echoed like thunder. Detective Garza's voice was a shout as he called on the police radio for paramedics. Charlie watched the scene numbly. The client she had been talking with had disappeared into the crowd. As sirens came screaming from a few blocks away, Max performed CPR, and his officers secured the front and back doors. The gallery windows blazed with whirling red lights. Sirens still screamed as two medics pushed through the crowd to crouch over the waiter. As Max rose, the look on his face told her the man was dead.

Anne Roche had been right there. Had she been involved, in some inexplicable manner? She stood now with the rest of the crowd waiting to be questioned.

 

After a long interval of feverish work with CPR, oxygen, and electric shock, the medics rose. Max nodded. The younger medic spoke into his radio, calling for the coroner. Max reached for Charlie, taking her hand. As she moved away with him, she felt cold, disoriented. Looking up at Max, she had to question the forces that were at work here.

This was the second disaster to occur during a ceremony of special meaning to her and Max. The first had been their wedding, when she and Max, along with most of the Molena Point PD and half the village, had
narrowly escaped being killed at the hands of a bomber.

Before that, Max had been set up as the prime suspect in a double murder, had been cleverly and almost successfully framed. And now…another calamity at a celebration involving Captain and Mrs. Max Harper.

Was there some pattern at work beyond her understanding? Some mysterious force that invited such ugly occurrences? But that was rubbish, she didn't believe in cosmic forces ruling one's life; and certainly such an idea would anger Max. Free souls ruled their own lives. Both she and Max believed that. Despite what Max called her “artistic temperament,” she prided herself on being totally centered in fact and reality—except of course for the one fact in her life that was beyond reality, the one aspect of her life that was so strange that Max would never believe it. The one amazement that she could never share with him, the secret she could never reveal to the person she loved most in all the world.

Glancing above her to the balcony, she looked into the eyes of the three cats, their noses pressed out through the rail, chins resting on their paws. Joe's sleek gray coat gleamed like polished pewter, marked with white paws, nose, and chest. Dulcie's dark tabby stripes shone rich as chocolate. The kit's fluffy black-and-brown fur was, as usual, every which way, her yellow eyes blazing with curiosity, her long fluffy tail lashing and twitching. The three cats watched Charlie knowingly, three serious feline gazes. And while Joe Grey stared boldly at her, and Dulcie narrowed her green eyes, the kit opened her pink mouth in a way that made Charlie's heart stop, made her slap her hands
over her own mouth in pantomime so the kit wouldn't forget herself and speak.

But of course the kit didn't speak. Slyly she looked down at Charlie, amused by her panic. And the cats turned to watch the newly arrived coroner at work, three pairs of eyes burning with conjecture, three wily feline minds where a hundred questions burned, where theories would be forming as to the cause of the waiter's death.

 

Before the waiter fell, the three cats had seen no one very near to him except Charlie and her client. The moment he fell, the cats had searched the crowd for any action that might be missed from the floor below, a furtive movement, some sophisticated and silent weapon being hidden in purse or coat pocket. But it was already too late: by the time the man fell they would surely have missed some vital piece of evidence.

It deeply angered Joe that he had been looking directly at the victim and had seen nothing. As soon as the man dropped, Joe had studied him, seeking anything awry that might, the next instant, vanish. Had there been an ice pick in the ribs? A silenced shot? Or did the waiter die from some poison that did not cause last-minute pain or spasms? Apparently neither cops nor coroner had found any such indication. The guy had gone down like a rock,
as if
he'd been shot. But neither police or coroner had found a wound.

The man worked for George Jolly's deli, which had catered the party; the cats had seen him in there serv
ing behind the counter. They were well acquainted with the deli, and with the charming brick alley that ran behind its back door, where George Jolly set out his daily snacks for the local cats. Jolly's alley was the most popular feline haunt in the village, although villagers and tourists as well enjoyed its potted trees and flowers, its cozy benches and little out-of-the way shops. Mr. Jolly wasn't present to help serve tonight. The two other waiters had knelt over their coworker after he fell, until detectives ordered them away.

Joe glanced at the kit, who crouched beside him. The young tortoiseshell was leaning so far out between the rails that Dulcie grabbed a mouthful of black-and-brown fur and hauled her back to safety.

“You want to drop down in the middle of those cops and medics?”

The kit smiled at Dulcie and edged over again, watching everything at once. For a cat who had not so long ago been terrified of humanity, who had sought only to escape mankind, the kit had turned into a brazen little people-watching sleuth. If Kit had a fault, it was her excesses. Too much curiosity, too much passion in wanting to know everything all at once. As the three cats peered over, Max Harper looked up suddenly to the balcony. He looked surprised to see them, then frowned.

Joe turned away to hide a smile. Harper could look so suspicious. What were
they
doing? Just hanging out to watch the party. The whole gallery knew they were up there, they'd been camped on the balcony all evening. Wilma had brought them up a plate loaded with party food, and they had received dozens of ad
miring looks, to say nothing of typical remarks from the guests:
Oh, the cute kitties…they look just like their portraits, aren't they darling…That tomcat, he looks just as much a brute as in Charlie's drawings, I wouldn't want to cross that one…

Joe looked down at Max Harper as dully as he could manage, scratched an imaginary flea, and yawned. With effort he remained a dull blob until at last Harper turned away.

Only when all the guests had been questioned and names and addresses recorded and folks were allowed to leave, only then did the cats abandon the balcony and trot down the spiral stairs. While the police remained to finish their work, Charlie's little group headed for the door, anticipating late-dinner reservations. Max would be along when he could. He and Detective Garza stood in the center of the gallery with a dozen officers, both quietly giving orders. It would be hours before anyone knew whether this had been a natural death or murder. Until that question was resolved, the department would treat the Aronson Gallery as the scene of a murder.

“If it
was
murder,” Dulcie said softly, “who knows how long the gallery will be locked down? And Charlie's show has just opened.”

Joe Grey licked his paw. “The coroner should know by morning. Charlie's already sold seven drawings and four prints. By morning, Garza should have photographed, fingerprinted, done the whole routine. Let's go, before we miss supper.” They moved quickly to the front door, where the party was shrugging on coats and winding scarves against the late October chill. But as the three cats slipped diffidently around their friends'
ankles, preening and purring like pet kitties, Joe's thoughts remained with the dead waiter. Allowing Clyde to pick him up, Joe purred and tried to act simple for the benefit of those who did not know his true nature; but as he snuggled against Clyde's shoulder, his sleek gray head was filled with questions as sharply irritating as the buzz of swarming bees.

J
oe lay across Clyde's shoulder absorbing the
warmth from his housemate's tweed sport coat, which smelled of aftershave and of dog. Around them along the village streets, the wind hushed coldly, and above their heads the sheltering oaks rattled like live things; a few tourists lingered looking into the bright shop windows, but the shadows between the shops were dense and still, for no moon shone beneath the heavy clouds. Clyde's tweed shoulder was rough against Joe's nose. Dressed in his usual party attire, a sport coat over a white cashmere turtleneck and Levi's, Clyde had had a haircut for the occasion. His dark hair was short and neat, with the obligatory little white line of non-tan—the general effect a clean, military look that Ryan liked. Ryan walked close beside them, Clyde and Ryan holding hands. Joe observed them with interest.

“What,” he had asked Clyde just last week, like some overprotective parent, “are your intentions? You're dating Ryan, neither one of you seeing anyone else. I know it's not all platonic, but where's the wild
abandon of passion? A couple of years ago, it was a different woman every week, in bed, cooking your supper, and in bed again. What happened to all the debauchery?”

Clyde had scowled at him, said nothing, and left the room. But Joe thought he knew. Clyde had had a sea change, a complete turnaround in the way he viewed his woman friends.

It had started with Kate, when she left her husband after he tried to kill her. She had been so very frightened, so distraught, had left the house in fear and come to Clyde for shelter and for comfort. Clyde had made up the guest bed and cooked a midnight supper for her, had tried to soothe and calm her, but when Kate exhibited her alarming feline nature, trying to make him understand the extent of her fears, when she took the form of a cat, she had put Clyde off royally.

After her move to San Francisco, there had been months when she'd been out of touch, when she wouldn't answer his calls or return them. Then Clyde began dating Charlie. That had lasted until Charlie and Max, unplanned and unintentionally, had fallen madly in love. And Joe smiled. They had been so distressed that they had hurt Clyde, so relieved when Ryan came on the scene, moving down from the city, and the two hit it off.

But where this romance was headed, Joe wasn't sure. Clyde had become far more circumspect in his relationships. No more one-week stands, no more wild partying—and Ryan, recovering from a miserable marriage, seemed just as reluctant to commit.

As they headed across the village to a late supper, strolling past the brightly lit shops, Wilma carried Dul
cie wrapped in her red cloak, and Hanni carried the kit. Hanni had covered her jade-green sequined dress with a long cape made from a Guatemalan blanket—tacky on anyone else, smashing on Hanni Coon with her lean model's figure and tousled white hair. Hanni, definitely a dog person, carried the tattercoat with considerable deference. Consorting with cats was new to her. The kit was so thoroughly enjoying herself looking over Hanni's shoulder into the shop windows that Joe wanted to tell her not to stare. When passersby greeted them, Joe looked totally blank and mindless, but the kit was incredibly eager, accepting the petting of the locals and smiling at them in a far too intelligent manner. The few tourists they met stopped to stare at the bizarre little group carrying three cats, but then they smiled. Molena Point was famous for odd characters.

Ahead of Hanni and Wilma, Charlie walked with Kate, Charlie wrapped in a long, creamy stole over her wine-damp gold lamé. Kate wore a black velvet ankle-length wrap. In the wake of the waiter's death, the party of six was silent and subdued. Strange, Joe thought. When the waiter fell across Charlie's lap, Kate had registered not only alarm but fear, a quick shock visible for only a moment before she took herself in hand.

Beside Joe, Ryan moved so close to Clyde that her dark, blowing hair tickled Joe's nose. She was growing more used to him, more comfortable with Clyde taking his tomcat around the village, carrying a cat in the car just for the ride or allowing Joe into a restaurant. No matter that Ryan took her dog into restaurant patios, that was different. After nearly a year of dating Clyde she hadn't quite decided what to make of Joe—Joe
knew he shouldn't tease her and set her up, but his jokes gave him such a high. Nothing so bizarre as to reveal the truth, nothing to imply that he understood Ryan's every word and might have something to say in return.

But dog people were such suckers for the inexplicable behavior of cats, for the unfathomable mysteries of the feline persona. There was, in the minds of most dog addicts, not the faintest understanding of the logic of feline thought. And that made them ridiculously easy marks. The simplest ruse could bring incredulous stares:
I never saw a cat go round a garden smelling the roses, standing up on its hind paws like that. I never saw a cat sit up like a dog to beg, or fetch a ball like a dog.

Well of course ordinary cats did all those things, when they chose to; he had demonstrated for Ryan nothing extraordinary. But in that ailuro-challenged young woman, his little dramas had stirred amazed responses. Dulcie kept telling him to watch himself. “You're going to blow it, Joe. Blow it big time. Ryan isn't stupid. How do you think Charlie found out that we can talk, that we're not ordinary? By watching us when we got careless, that's how. Just as you're getting careless with Ryan.”

“Don't worry so much. I'm never careless, my jokes are totally harmless. And Ryan isn't Charlie, Charlie's the one with the imagination. Not everyone would come to the conclusion Charlie did. Ryan's a cop's kid, she likes a logical explanation for everything. Facts are facts. She would no more believe a cat could carry on a conversation than Max Harper would believe it. And you have to admit, we're in Harper's face all the time.”

“But…”

“There's no way,” Joe had said, “that either Ryan or Harper would ever buy the truth about us—unless, of course, we sat down and had a little heart-to-heart with them.”

He looked up as they approached the restaurant's brick patio, and he licked his muzzle, tasting the good smells of steak and lobster. The patio was crowded with diners at small tables beneath its sprawling oaks. The host was all smiles as he escorted them through the patio, through the main dining room, and up the stairs. The eyes of everyone were on them, not only because Charlie was an up-and-coming artist in the community and the wife of the chief of police, not only because of Hanni's theatrical good looks and her status as a top interior designer, but because how many dinner parties, reserving the upstairs private dining room, included on the guest list three cats?

The smaller upstairs room with its paneling, high-peaked ceiling, and rafters, featured a long skylight along one slanting side, above which heavy clouds drifted, edged with light from the hidden moon. A fire was burning on the brick hearth. Bay windows formed three sides of the intimate dining room, looking down on the village's bright shops and dark oaks. A long table filled the room, draped with a white cloth and set with heavy silver, flowered china, and a centerpiece of red pyracantha berries. On a window seat in one of the bays, among a tangle of flowered cushions, three linen napkins had been laid open beneath three small flowered plates. There, no silverware was required. As the
cats settled into their own places and the human diners took their seats, Max Harper hurried up the stairs, giving Charlie a grin, the two as delighted to be together as if they'd been parted for days.

“Dallas is still at it,” Max said. “We just got the coroner's prelim.”

“That was fast. What did he say?”

Harper's thin, lined face was expressionless, a cop's face that you had to know very well to decipher. He looked irritable, as if some vital question was still begging. Joe watched him so intently that Dulcie nudged him, pretending to nibble a flea. Immediately he stuck his nose in his supper, concentrating on his salmon mousse—the rich, creamy confection was far more delicious than any sweet dessert mousse that so delighted humans. Salmon mousse, in Joe's opinion, was one of the great inventions of mankind.

“Could have been accidental death,” Harper said. “Could be manslaughter. No way to tell, yet. He died of blunt trauma, a blunt blow to the head.”

“But there wasn't…” Charlie began. “No one…” She grew quiet, letting Max continue.

“As near as Dr. Bern can tell, so far, the blow occurred three or four days ago. There was slow bleeding within the skull where multiple small capillaries had ruptured. The pressure can build up slowly, over time.” He took a bite of salad. “Pressure pushing down around the spinal cord. Bern thinks that happened over several days. At the last, while he was serving drinks at the party, the increase of blood became rapid.

“When Bern called, he was still looking for the sud
den rupture of an artery or vein, which would have been the final event in a long drawn-out trauma.” He spooned more dressing on his salad and took a sip of beer, a frustrated frown touching his face. Harper had quit smoking over a year before, but sometimes Joe saw him itching to reach for a cigarette, his fingers moving nervously, the creases along his cheeks deepening.

“The guy's ID was faked,” Max said. “He's been using the social security number of a man who died three years ago. Strangest thing, his prints are not on record in any of the western states. It'll take us a week or two, maybe more, to get fingerprint information for the rest of the country. Department of Justice is always backed up.”

Charlie said, “He could have been hit in the head anywhere, then? Several days ago?”

Harper nodded. “There's a rectangular bruise on the side of the head, the shape of a brick. It was already fading, but there were brick particles in the skin. Could have been an accident, maybe he stood up under a low flight of stairs, for instance, and cracked himself on the head. Or it could have happened in a fight, some guy bashed him with a brick. He was using the name Sammy Clarkman. He's worked for George Jolly for three months, has done several catering jobs during that time.”

Ryan leaned forward, looking at Max. “Lucinda Greenlaw knows him.”

Max gave her his full attention.

“I knew I'd seen him in Jolly's Deli,” Ryan said. “I'd forgotten, until just now, that last month when the Greenlaws were here, Lucinda and I were in there, and she knew the guy.”

Max listened quietly. The whole table was silent. Beside Joe, the kit was so alert and still that he kept an eye on her—he never knew when the kit would show too clearly her eager enthusiasm.

Lucinda and Pedric, a pair of tall, bone-thin eighty-year-olds, had married just a year before, after Lucinda's husband Shamas died in an unfortunate manner for which one of his nephews went to prison. On the day of their wedding the Greenlaws had adopted the kit. They knew her special talents, they knew that she, like Joe Grey and Dulcie, was not in any way ordinary. The kit's command of the English language, her off-the-wall ideas, and her opinion on almost every subject were, in the eyes of the Greenlaws, deserving of admiration and respect.

Setting out to travel at their leisure up and down the California coast, they had planned to have the kit with them, but she was so prone to car sickness that she had turned wan and miserable. For the kit, the pleasure of travel wasn't worth the distress. The Greenlaws had arranged that she stay for a while with Dulcie and Wilma. Just at the end of September they had returned to the village for a short layover before the holidays, had stored their RV in Wilma Getz's driveway, and, scooping up the kit in a delirium of pleasure, they had checked into a suite at the Otter Pine Inn, the nicest of several village hotels that catered to pets. The kit had spent a delirious week enjoying herself with her human family. And, to the kit's great joy, the elderly newlyweds had decided it would soon be time to fold away their maps of the California coast and build their Molena Point house as they had promised the kit they would do. The tortoiseshell had been ecstatic, a whirl-
wind of anticipation. When she spoke of the house, her round yellow eyes shone like twin moons, her bushy tail lashed and switched. She was a wild thing filled with exploding dreams: Their own home, a real home, her beloved Lucinda and Pedric forevermore near to her.

But now, what was this? What was the connection between the footloose Greenlaws and the dead waiter? Glancing at Dulcie, Joe intently watched those at the table.

“We had ordered a picnic,” Ryan was saying. “We picked it up and spent the day on Hellhag Hill laying out their new house. Seeing how the sunlight falls, how to cut the prevailing winds. That hilltop house could be truly desolate and cold if it isn't set right on the land.

“When Lucinda and I stopped at Jolly's to get the picnic basket, that guy—Sammy—was behind the counter. You could tell he was new, didn't know where things were, like the small plastic containers. I thought maybe he'd just been working in the kitchen, not at the counter, he had to dig around in the cupboard forever to find what he needed.

“Lucinda called him by name,” Ryan said. “He didn't seem to recognize her until she reminded him that they'd met in Russian River, and then he seemed pleased to see her. She told me later he'd worked at the inn where she and Pedric stayed this past summer.

“I thought,” Ryan said, “that the guy wouldn't have acknowledged Lucinda at all, if she hadn't nudged him. That maybe he didn't want to be recognized.”

Harper looked around the table, waiting to see if anyone else knew the man. No one did, and no one else had seen him at Jolly's. Kate had been in the village at
the same time that Lucinda and Pedric were, but she hadn't been in Jolly's. Clyde said, “I ordered takeout last weekend, but Jolly's son made the delivery.” He glanced inadvertently across the room to Joe Grey, as if wondering if Joe knew Sammy. The tomcat stared, wondering at Clyde's carelessness. The expression on Clyde's face, when he realized what he'd done, was embarrassed and shocked. To cover Clyde's social blunder Joe yawned hugely, pawed at his ear as if it itched, and belched.