Cat Laughing Last (17 page)

T
he ambulance
had gone, taking Cora Lee to the hospital bundled onto a stretcher, tucked up under a blanket. Dulcie imagined her in surgery surrounded by doctors and nurses working over her. Stubbornly she imagined Cora Lee awake again, sitting up in a white hospital bed with flowers and get-well cards around her. And, crouched in the shadows of the alley, cuddling the kit close, she tried to stop the little tattercoat's frightened shivering. Licking the kit's ear, Dulcie purred against her, whispering, “It's all right. She'll be all right, Kit.” But they couldn't be certain of that.

“She ran from that man,” the kit said. “He chased her, he must have hit her. When I found her here she was so cold, then sweating, and then cold again. She looked at me and cried, ‘Don't!' and tried to get up and then she twisted, and cried out, then fainted.” The kit looked wildly at Dulcie. “All those terrible tubes hanging when they put her in the ambulance. What did they do to her?”

“The tubes could save her life, Kit. The medics will
do all they can, and we must be patient.” But Dulcie didn't feel patient.

The kit's dark mottled fur stuck up in frantic wisps, and her yellow eyes were as round as moons. “She was taking me home to Wilma's, she…”

“I know, Kit. I was there when she called Wilma. She said she'd stop here to look in the shop window at the new display. She'll be all right, Kit. She'll be fine. Did you have a nice evening?”

“Oh, yes. Custard and chicken and music and such a pretty house and a nice creamy blanket on her bed, but I had a bad dream and then this morning it came true. When we got here the window was all broken, and I could see someone lying in there. Cora Lee rushed to look, she was so upset and wanting to help that she left the car door open, didn't think about a cat running away. But I didn't run, I jumped on the dash and watched her through the window. She looked in at the dead woman, then she whirled around toward the car like she meant to call the police, but there was a little white packet nearly under her feet, like papers. She snatched it up, hardly stopping.”

“What papers, Kit?”

“I don't know, papers tied in a ribbon, and she was almost to the car when a man burst out of the window and hit her and grabbed at them. She kicked him and hit him and twisted away and ran. She still had the little packet. Ran around the side of the building. I remembered about the phone and punched the numbers like I saw you and Joe do, and told them about the woman in the window.

“He chased her, and I followed them. I was so scared and I wanted to claw him. He chased her into the alley
and hit her hard. When she fell he grabbed the papers and ran. Left her there all huddled up clutching her middle. I heard a car roar away. She tried to crawl but she was hurt too bad and I didn't know what to do. She looked at me like she didn't see me right, like she didn't know what I was. I licked and licked her face and was going to go talk in the phone again, but she was so hot and then cold and then I heard the siren, and then you came.”

“Kit, what did the papers look like?” Dulcie said.

“Folded up and tied with an old faded ribbon. Old brownish paper like if it's been in the trash a long time.”

“What did the man look like?” Dulcie glanced around for Joe but didn't see him.

“Just a man. I don't know. Tan clothes. Tall, sort of thin, running away.”

“What color hair? Would you know him? Recognize his smell?”

“I don't know. Maybe.” The kit looked crestfallen, her head down, her ears back to her head. “I'm not sure. Maybe I would.” She began to sniff around the alley. But the medics and police had been there; the smells were all mixed up.

“Come here, Kit,” Dulcie said. “It will be all right, we'll find him.” But her mind was on Joe Grey, uneasy because Joe had vanished.

Was he back there among the officers? Had he followed them into the shop through the broken window? Armed officers going in after a killer would be alert to any smallest movement. The faintest disturbance among the shelves and furniture, and their guns would be on him.

But she was being foolish. Police officers didn't fire blind—not like some untrained deer hunter shooting at a sound in the brush.

Yet still she worried, pacing the alley, afraid Joe would do something foolish, something macho and foolish.

 

Within the shop, Joe looked far from macho. Crouched under a rack of women's dresses with a lacy hem dragging over his ears, he peered out from between swaths of silk and velvet, watching Dallas Garza clear the premises. The resale store was so crowded with racks and shelves and overflowing boxes that he felt like he was back among the heaped refuse of some San Francisco alley—except these cast-offs were a far cry from the junk he'd encountered in the city; that trash had been so tacky that even the homeless didn't want it. This shop had some nicer cookware than Clyde's kitchen, some handsome lamps, and typewriters and even a microwave oven. In the center of the room between the clothes racks stood a child's desk, a faded easy chair, a pink crib, three dining chairs, and a sign proclaiming that all mechanical items were in working order.

Slipping along beneath the ladies' hems, flinching as clothes slithered down his back, he followed Detective Garza. Garza was taking his time, photographing and making carefully recorded notes in a small black notebook.

Pausing under a rack of men's pants and shirts, Joe followed Garza through an archway, creeping belly-to-carpet among the shadows, into the back room—into
chaos. A bookshelf lay toppled, its books scattered open across a cascade of phonograph records and broken china. An accordion lay crushed beneath an overturned table, among a spill of mismatched shoes. And there were splatters of blood, the smell of human blood.

Beneath the fallen books and records, he saw a small, carved chest. A second chest lay half hidden by a scatter of baby clothes. Both looked old, dark, and roughly made, very much like those in the newspaper picture. Watching Garza photograph the scene, Joe slipped behind an upended suitcase for a better look. He wondered if Garza had seen the morning paper, if he was aware of the wooden casks. One was the size of a small bread box, incised with primitive birds and painted in soft greens and blues. The other was half that big, carved with flowers and stained in red and green. The pieces of a third box lay beneath it, smashed and split, with the lid torn off. Joe studied the scene of what must have been a violent fight, and sniffed the tangle of smells.

He had, following Garza in through the front door, reared up to look into the window at Fern's body where she lay waiting for the coroner. The two bullet holes, one through her chest, one through her throat, were both small and neat. As the detective turned away, Joe had nipped into the window for a better look.

The bullet holes were large in front, raggedly splattering blood and flesh, as if she'd been shot in the back. Apparently she had been shot at close range. He couldn't see her back, to know if there were powder marks. The unpleasant smells of death mixed sickly with Fern's perfume.

But here in the back room, Fern's perfume came sharper, clinging among the broken furniture.

Had she fought with her killer here? Had she been shot here, from behind, then dragged into the broken window? Or had she managed to crawl there before she died? Or had she run, and gotten as far as the window? He watched Garza photographing, taking advantage of every angle, capturing every smallest detail. Was it Fern who broke the window to get at the chests or did her killer show up first and shatter the glass? If Fern broke in, why would she bring the casks in here? Maybe she was followed, maybe she ran back here to get away.

Too many possible scenarios. He wanted to hear the kit's story. And he wanted to know more of what Garza and Davis found before he tried to fit the pieces together.

The fur flew in both directions. Joe's clandestine method of investigation, even with the advantage of his highly superior scent detection, his finer night vision, and his acumen at breaking and entering, was seldom adequate alone, without input from the police. A cat sleuth, picking up what the cops missed, was still deeply dependent on the findings of the crime lab.

Face it, Joe thought, he and Dulcie and the cops were a team—even if MPPD knew nothing of the arrangement. What a cat laugh, Joe thought, stretching out under an antique baby carriage, watching Garza bag evidence. The department had no notion that it was the cooperation of cat and human that had made them one of the finest detecting machines in the state, had put them right up there in the top percentage of cases solved.

Garza had photographed the area where the three chests lay, and was now bagging them, taking great care, placing each piece of the broken cask in a separate evidence bag. One thing was sure. If the fight in the back room was between Fern and the man who hit Cora Lee, if Fern had held her own long enough to create this amount of damage and chaos, Fern was stronger than she looked.

But she would be strong, Joe thought. Working for Richard Casselrod in the antiques shop, she not only kept the books but helped with the displays and moved heavy pieces of furniture. Though a lot of that skill was in the balance, in little tricks like moving a heavy dresser across smooth floors on an upside-down throw rug, sliding it along as he'd seen Wilma do when she rearranged her furniture.

Say the unknown man broke the glass and grabbed the chests, but saw Fern approaching. He ran into the shop. Fern followed him, tried to take the chests, and there was a fight. One of them fell, breaking the one chest. The guy pulled a gun, Fern ran, and he shot her.

Too soon to speculate. So far, his ideas were no more than a forensic shell game—Clyde would say Joe was playing Monday morning football. Yet he couldn't leave it alone; something kept nudging him. He was missing something, some fact right in front of his nose, some small bit of evidence that, apparently, even Dallas Garza hadn't found.

He sure didn't want to think that Cora Lee was involved in this. And so far, he'd found no scent of her within the shop, or in the window.

One thing was certain. When the ladies of the Senior Survival club had gotten interested in the old chests,
they had fallen into more than they bargained for. Someone intent on making a bundle from the Ortega-Diaz letters had become a real threat to the ladies' innocent pursuit.

Creeping close on Garza's heels among the clutter, Joe sniffed every object, trying to sort out the smells. It wasn't easy, with recurring whiffs of Fern's gumdrop perfume mixed with the aroma of old books and old clothes and shoes, with a regular soup of ancient stinks. Yet he did find one scent worth sorting out, a hint hardly detectable over Fern's perfume. Padding closer to a heap of clothes, he fixed on a tiny bit of refuse barely visible beneath a wrinkled scarf.

He was looking at telling evidence, at a missing piece of the puzzle.

He reached out a paw, but didn't touch. He shoved the scarf away, so the cherry pit was in plain sight. He was crouched, looking, when Garza turned.

Backing into cover, Joe remained frozen behind a rack of dresses. Garza stared in his direction and stood watching for further movement, his square, tanned face immobile, his dark eyes watchful, his hand on his gun.

When the detective moved suddenly, rolling the clothes rack aside, Joe moved along with the rack, staying under the clothes, his nose inches from Garza's black shoes.

When Garza found no one behind the rack he circled it, and investigated two more racks that stood against the wall before he decided he was alone.

But he had seen the cherry pit. He stood looking, then knelt and scooped it into an evidence bag.

Smiling, with a twitch of whiskers, Joe Grey fled the scene, fading among the shadows to the front door, pawing it open where an officer had left it ajar. Racing up the sidewalk and around the corner to find Dulcie and the kit, the last bit of evidence burned in his brain, Vivi's forgotten little cherry seed, sucked clean.

“T
his isn't
going to work,” Joe said, looking up at the new, locked front door of the police station.

“Of course it will work.” Dulcie backed deeper into the bushes, away from the sidewalk and the scudding wind that dragged leaves along the pavement past their noses. They were quiet a moment, warm against each other, watching the pub door, half a block down, waiting for Max Harper. Every time the door opened, the wind carried to them the heady scent of beer and hot pastrami.

When Harper emerged at last, returning from an early dinner, Dulcie slipped from the bushes into the shadow behind the twin urns of potted geraniums that flanked the door. When he entered the station she padded in directly behind his heels, as silent and intent as a stalking tiger.

Joe moved close to her and they slipped behind the front desk, across from the dispatcher's counter. Above them, the new front window was just beginning to darken, the spring sky streaked with swiftly blowing clouds. As Harper headed down the hall to his office,
Dulcie slipped out again and approached the dispatcher's open cubicle. Padding in under the counter, looking up at the dispatcher, she mewed softly.

The evening dispatcher was a middle-aged woman with blond curly hair and a thick stomach that pulled her uniform into horizontal wrinkles. She occupied a nine-by-nine room with open counters on three sides, loaded with electronic equipment. When she saw Dulcie, she glanced across the entry and down the hall to make sure no uninvited human had entered with the cat.

“Will you look at this. Where did you come from, you pretty thing? Did you follow the captain in here? Oh, aren't you sweet!” She knelt to pet Dulcie, her curly blond hair brassy in the overhead light. Maybe the little chirping noise she made was the way she talked to her own cats. She was new to the station, working the four-to-twelve watch. Her name tag said Officer Mabel Farthy. Opening a drawer under the counter, she produced a ham sandwich from a crackling paper bag.

“Come on up on the counter, kitty. Want a little bite? Come on up here.”

Dulcie leaped onto the counter, smiled sweetly, and accepted the offering, gobbling the ham but daintily spitting out the bread. At least the woman didn't use mustard. Mabel stood stroking and talking to Dulcie until an emergency call pulled her away. When she turned to handle the radio, Dulcie walked along the counter to where she could see Joe peering out from behind the information desk. He couldn't see down the hall but she could.

The coast was clear, not an officer in sight. She
flicked her tail, and Joe streaked down the hall toward the offices.

Light spilled from two rooms. The one at the far end was where Harper had disappeared. When Joe vanished into the first room, Dulcie turned to study the communications layout.

This setup had far more space than the old communications desk, and Harper had purchased more and fancier equipment. The three new computers and three radios were indeed impressive. Mabel answered two more calls, sending her squad cars out, then took advantage of a lull in the action to offer Dulcie another morsel of ham, petting and talking to her. Oh, Dulcie thought, fate did smile upon the righteous feline. This woman was a pushover.

Dulcie remained on the counter for some time, shamelessly purring and rubbing her face against Mabel's stroking hand, cementing their relationship. With the increased security in the remodeled department, Mabel and the two other dispatchers were going to be key players.

She just hoped one of the three didn't turn out to be ailurophobic. Smiling up at Mabel, she purred a song of delight that left the officer beaming, and left Dulcie feeling that she could tame the most timorous cat hater. All she and Joe had to do was hang around the department and make cute, and they'd soon be regulars. Maybe they could even become department mascots, and she could turn her gig as official library cat over to the kit for a while.

This morning, when Cora Lee was taken straight from the Emergency Room into surgery, the kit had been a basket case, pacing and worrying until Wilma,
in desperation, took the kit to work with her at the library. The kit had seemed to like that. Cora Lee was out of surgery by noon, minus her spleen, which Wilma said was not critical. Otherwise, Wilma said, she was doing well. Wilma had promised the kit that, if she behaved, she'd smuggle her in when Cora Lee was ready for visitors.

A cat in a briefcase? Or maybe concealed in a pot of fake flowers? Smiling, Dulcie pictured a gift box fitted out with a little door and perforated with air holes.

 

Following Max Harper's scent down the hall, Joe tried to get the lay of the new design. The remodeling wasn't yet finished, but most of the drywall was up and plastered, and ready to paint. The new bulletproof windows were in place, as well as bulletproof glass between the offices. He missed the huge squad room crowded with desks, with all the officers doing their paperwork and taking their phone calls in communal chaos. Now that Harper and the two detectives had private offices, Joe's own life would be more difficult.

Dallas Garza sat at the desk in the first lighted office, deep in paperwork. But the instant Joe peered cautiously in around the door, Garza glanced up, suddenly all attention. “What the hell?”

Joe stepped out into plain sight, his paws sweating, telling himself to stay cool.

Garza laughed. “How the hell did you get in here?” He held out his hand to Joe. Annoyed, Joe approached him and rubbed his face against Garza's fingers. This was so demeaning, to have to ingratiate himself—but
then, he did like Garza. It wasn't as if he was playing up to some stuffed-suit type.

“You trying to adopt me, cat? You move into my house, and now here you are in the station. What happened to our beefed-up security? You must really want to be a cop's cat.”

Joe! The name is Joe!

Garza rubbed Joe's ears the way he would a dog's, gave him a pat on the butt, and turned back to his reports. Casually Joe trotted away, hoping the detective wouldn't think to mention the incident to Max Harper. Harper would not be so forgiving. He soon found the report-writing room with its six computers, each in a private carrel, with bulletproof glass between. He found the coffee room, and had a little snack of someone's leftover doughnut. But it was the small, padded interrogation room that really interested him.

The cubicle was just big enough for a little table and two chairs. A TV camera was mounted high in one corner. It would be connected to screens in other parts of the building, maybe in the communications room, Joe thought, and in Garza's and Harper's offices, areas where an enterprising cat might, with a cavalier smile and purr, pick up all manner of police intelligence.

The door to the basement was kept closed. He knew that the disaster center down there had been upgraded with state-of-the-art communications equipment, a large supply of emergency food and water, six narrow bunk beds lining one wall, and improved bathing facilities. Harper had described with some pride this brains of rescue operations, to be used in case of flood, earthquake, riot, or war.

Max Harper had created a new and improved crime-fighting plant with all the bells and whistles—efficient, but not cat friendly. Maybe Dulcie was right; maybe feline PR was the best antidote to all this upscale security.

Times change
, Joe thought.
Everything today hinges on good PR. Whether you're a writer like Elliott Traynor or just an everyday cat sleuth, face it, networking's become important
. He guessed he could go along with the program, could put forth a little in-your-face chutzpah. If Dulcie could play lonesome kitty, so could he.

He didn't care to see the updated basement firing range; he'd rather just imagine the cavernous room from seeing similar ones on TV. He didn't like the smell of gunpowder. That stink brought back a couple of decidedly unpleasant moments in his career.

Harper had described very graphically to Clyde how the firing booths had been improved, with thicker barriers between them, and more sophisticated targets; with moving figures electrically operated and enough sound effects and flashing lights to unnerve any shooter. Joe was headed back toward the dispatcher, slipping past Harper's lighted office hoping the captain wouldn't look up from his desk, when the dispatcher buzzed Harper. “Long distance, Captain.”

“Tell them—”

“It's New York. Some literary agent.”

“A what?”

“Literary agent,” she said. “An Adele McElroy.”

Drawing back into the shadows, Joe listened with a thrill of interest. He heard Harper pick up and identify
himself, then the captain was quiet for a moment. Then, “Of course I know Traynor. He's big news here in the village.”

Joe didn't like hearing only one side of a conversation. He began to fidget. When Harper paused again, he beat it into the first empty office.

Leaping atop a makeshift desk of plywood balanced on sawhorses, he slipped the phone from its cradle.

Silence. Wrong line. He punched the lighted button.

“…all right,” Harper was saying, “as far as I know. Yes, Mrs. Traynor's here with him. They've cast his play and are starting to rehearse. What is this about?”

“Maybe nothing,” the agent said. “Elliott is three months overdue on this book, and that's not like him. He's always ahead of schedule. And he's acting so very strange, he has me worried. We're good friends, Captain, social friends. But now suddenly he won't talk to me. Won't tell me what's wrong, yet I have the distinct impression something's very much amiss.

“I'm concerned about him, Captain Harper, and I didn't know who else to call. Elliott's always been so conscientious, enthusiastic about his work, always had the material to me months ahead of time—and he has always confided in me.

“I know about the cancer, of course, I know he's continuing treatments out there. It may be nothing more than his not feeling well, the depression that can accompany ill health. I can't get anything out of the medical people here. I've called his doctors but they won't talk to me.

“I can't help thinking there's something really wrong—more than the illness. I know it sounds strange, but—do you know him well?”

“No, Ms. McElroy, I don't. I really don't see that—”

“This—this may sound like nothing to you, but he's sending me chapters—a few at a time, which I asked him to do. Chapters that are…they have me upset about his mental state. They're so…so inferior to his usual work….”

“That really isn't—”

“We're talking a half-million-dollar advance, here. I don't think he's in any condition to write this book. But he won't talk to me. Nor will Vivi. This isn't like Elliott. And I…I need help here, and I don't know who else to call.”

Harper was silent.

“I called a friend of his, out there, a Gabrielle Row, asked her if Elliott was all right. She said she really didn't know, that she didn't see that much of them, that they were only casual acquaintances. I had thought differently, from Elliott. I had trouble getting her number, and I still haven't reached Richard Casselrod, though I've left messages.”

“You want to fill me in on your relationship with Gabrielle and with Casselrod?”

“Well, it's really Elliott and Vivi's relationship. Gabrielle was here in the city last fall. She had lunch with Elliott. And Casselrod was here in December for the antiques show. He contacted Elliott and spent some time with him, something to do with research on the new book.”

As far as Joe knew, Casselrod hadn't socialized with the Traynors in the village. Now, Harper was cool to the agent. “Can you be more specific about the problem?”

“It's his writing, Captain. It's…I know this sounds silly, but these last chapters are so very different from
Elliott's lyrical style, so different that I'm worried about his state of mind.”

“Ms. McElroy, there's nothing the police can do about Mr. Traynor's writing skills or his state of mind. I'm not some literary shrink committed to treating writer's block. If Traynor should become violent or present some kind of danger…”

“Or, Captain, if he is in danger? I think that might be a possibility.”

“If he's threatened or harmed, Ms. McElroy, of course it's our business. But he would have to file a complaint.”

Why was Harper being so stuffy? And sarcastic! Joe felt a quick stab of anger at the man he admired. This woman sounded in real distress.

And he could understand why, having read Traynor's latest work. If he were Traynor's agent, he'd be worried, too. This Adele McElroy was three thousand miles away, trying to deal with a writer who seemed to have lost his grip, who seemed to be dumping a million-dollar novel down the drain. She needed some help here. Why wouldn't Harper at least be civil? Joe wanted to tell her she should hop on a plane, get on out here, deal with Traynor in person.

“Captain Harper, let me give you my number. Would you call me…if you find anything you think would be of help?”

Harper grunted. She repeated her number. Hastily Joe memorized it, saying it over to himself. The handicap of being unable to write didn't bother him often. But when a problem did arise, it really bugged him—just as Harper's attitude was bugging him.

Though to be fair, he had to consider the matter from Harper's view. This really wasn't police business. Not unless a complaint was filed, as Harper said, or something happened to Traynor that would bring in the law. Max Harper was a cop, not a social worker.

And yet, Joe thought, knowing Harper, and despite what Harper told Adele McElroy, he bet the captain would go the extra mile, that he'd look into Traynor's condition far more thoroughly than he had told Ms. McElroy he could do.

After all, there was plenty of indication that Traynor might be going funny in the brain. Like shooting raccoons in his pantry—some people might consider that strange. And Traynor's extreme irritability. And Traynor demanding that Fern Barth play the lead, instead of Cora Lee, a decision any fool could see was softheaded. And Traynor's two disappearing acts from local restaurants, apparently to avoid a face-to-face with Ryan Flannery. Added up, all this seemed to Joe Grey to amount to a decidedly squirrelly mental condition.