Cat Laughing Last (21 page)

The history was all there, but reading this was so dull. Elliott Traynor's words should flow, be alive, propel the reader along. She wanted to see these chapters as he should have written them. She felt strangely hurt that Traynor was ruining his own work. Aligning the pages, she had no notion that she was not alone. A
thump on the desk brought her swinging around—to face Joe Grey. He stood boldly on the blotter, a smug smile on his gray-and-white face.

“At it again, Charlie.”

“How did you get in? I fixed the vent.”

“What did you take to Harper?”

She simply looked at him.

“What did you take to Harper? Something from the dishwasher, but you had your back to me. I couldn't see much through the window.”

“How did you get inside?”

“Slipped in behind you when you got back from meeting Harper.”

“That makes me feel pretty lame that I didn't even see you.”

“I was on the roof next door when you came to work. Watched you through the window, digging around in the dishwasher. Bagging plates, Charlie? Followed you over the roofs. What's Harper after, fingerprints? All that fuss with evidence bags.”

Charlie sighed. “Dirty glasses. I don't know what it's for, okay?”

He glanced at the pages in her hand. “When did Harper ask you for the prints?”

“He called me early this morning, if it's any of your business.”

“What time this morning?”

“Why? What difference does it make? I don't know. He woke me up. Around five, I guess.” She looked at him, frowning. “He said he was working on a hunch. That he didn't want to make waves yet—that an early morning tip got him thinking.”

Joe Grey smiled.

She reached to touch his shoulder. “What? What did you say to him?”

Joe glanced at the manuscript. “What do you think of the latest chapter?”

Charlie sighed. You couldn't force information from anyone, certainly not from a hardheaded cat. She looked down at Traynor's offending pages. “This should be a wonderful book; so much was going on in the early eighteen hundreds. He's done a huge amount of research, but he's going nowhere with it. This makes me want to write it the way it should be. How can he—”

They heard the back door close softly, though no car had pulled up the drive and they had seen no one approaching the house. At the sound, Charlie flipped on the vacuum. “Get lost, Joe. Hide somewhere.” Maybe Vivi or Elliott had cut through the backyards from the side street.

“Open the window,” Joe hissed.

Flipping the latch and sliding the glass back, she watched Joe leap through and vanish in the bushes below. She was vacuuming when Vivi appeared, pausing in the doorway to watch her. She was dressed in blue tights, a short denim skirt, a black halter top, and a black cap, her dark hair pulled through the back in a ponytail. Charlie turned off the vacuum.

“Why did you leave this morning, Charlie? You left just after you got here. What did you take away with you in the tote bag?”

“I went to get my purse, I left it in the grocery. I had trash in the bag,” Charlie said, laughing. “Thought I
had my purse. The house I cleaned last night—I dropped the trash in my bag and forgot about it. What's wrong?”

“You could have thrown it in our trash.”

“I dropped it in the grocery Dumpster.” Unplugging the vacuum, she looped the cord up, to wheel it to another room.

“And why is Elliott's manuscript all mussed?” Vivi's eyes were wide and knowing; slowly they narrowed, never leaving Charlie. “Have you been reading this?” Her face drained of color. “Elliott doesn't like people reading his work-in-progress. What were you doing, Ms. Getz? And why is the window open?” She was suddenly so heated that Charlie backed away. “Speak up, Ms. Getz. What were you doing in here?”

Charlie looked Vivi in the eye. “I guess I brushed against the pages. I had no idea he was so—that he, or you, would be upset.” Her look at Vivi was as puzzled as she could manage. “As to the window, I was warm. If you don't like me opening a window, I won't do that anymore.” Closing the glass, she moved away down the hall to clean the bedroom.

Vivi didn't follow her; she remained in the study a long time. As Charlie made the bed and hung up their clothes, she heard Vivi unlock the desk, heard her open and close the drawers and shuffle papers, perhaps trying to see what else Charlie might have been into. So what was she going to do? Charlie thought, amused. Report her to Max Harper?

Vivi was gone when she finished vacuuming and dusting, had apparently left the house. Charlie supposed, if Vivi had followed her earlier this morning and had seen her meet Max, she would have been far
angrier, would have confronted her with that information in a real rage.

Or would Vivi actually have confronted her? Maybe Vivi had seen them, maybe she was desperate to know what Charlie had taken from the cottage.

She went about her work absently, leaving at noon to take care of a number of small household repairs for other customers while Mavity and her crew did their cleaning. She couldn't wait to see if Max had been able to lift two good sets of prints. She finished up at five and hurried home to her apartment to shower and start dinner, stopping first by Wilma's to pick a little bouquet from the garden, daisies and some orange poppies, simple flowers that should please Max.

Frying hamburger to add to the bottled spaghetti sauce, she made a salad and pulled a cheesecake from the freezer. Max got there early, coming directly from the station. He sat on her daybed drinking an O'Doul's, making no comment as she recounted the events of her morning. She left out only her conversation with Joe Grey. Moving from stove to table, and to the daybed, she sat down at the end tucking her feet under her, sipping her beer while the spaghetti boiled. She liked living in a small space, everything near at hand. This apartment was so compact she could almost cook her breakfast before she got out of bed.

She looked at Max comfortably, quietly relishing his presence here in her private space. “I've never felt quite the degree of anger and confusion that I do with Vivi Traynor. You're right, she's not a likable person. And she was so suspicious of me,” she said, grinning. “I don't think she saw me meet you, but I can't be sure. She was so prodding and pushy.”

“Don't you feel sorry for her husband?” Max said, amused.

Charlie shrugged. “He married her. Poor man. Maybe he got more than he bargained for. Did you get their prints all right?”

“Two perfect sets. Unless they've had company in the last couple of days, we have prints for both Vivi and Elliott.”

“And you're not going to tell me why.”

“Not yet.”

She rose to test the boiling spaghetti and to dress the salad of baby greens and homegrown tomatoes that their local market had been featuring. As she shook the dressing, Harper's cell phone rang. She drained the pasta quickly and dished it up as he talked, afraid he would be called away. She liked watching him, liked his thin, brown hands, his angled, leathery face. She liked the contrast between how he looked in his uniform, a very capable, no-nonsense cop, daunting in his authority, and how he looked in faded jeans and western shirt and hat, with a pitchfork in his hand, or on horseback. That same sense of ultimate control was there, only more accessible.

“Yes, I have them,” he said into the phone. “I sent the card this morning, overnight mail. You'll let me know—you can guess we're wanting this one yesterday.”

He smiled, glancing at her as he listened. “You bet it will. Answer a lot of questions. Was she dealing with it all right?”

Another pause.

“Very good. Maybe we'll get it sorted out.”

He hung up, winking at Charlie, and poured another
O'Doul's. He said nothing about the call. She was certain it had to do with the Traynors' prints. Across the table from him, she ate quietly, content in his silence. When he was ready to share information, he'd do that.

But, she thought, that sharing would present a prime dilemma.

Because, was she going to pass on whatever he told her to Joe Grey? Or was she going to guard the confidence Max Harper had in her?

B
eyond Wilma's
windows, the garden was pale with fog, the twisted oak trees and flowers washed to milky hues. Looking out from the desk in the living room, Dulcie enjoyed both worlds, the veiled garden from which she had just emerged and the fire on the hearth behind her. Near the warm blaze, Cora Lee was tucked up on the love seat, with the afghan over her legs and the kit cuddled on her lap.

Wilma had just this morning brought Cora Lee home from the hospital and gotten her settled in the guest room. It seemed to Dulcie that her housemate was always sheltering one friend or another. Charlie had first come to her aunt when she fled San Francisco after quitting her commercial art job, convinced she was a failure, that she would never make it on her own. Then after Charlie started her cleaning business, she had come home to Wilma's again when she was evicted from her first apartment, dumping her cardboard boxes and bits of furniture back in Wilma's garage. And Mavity had come here from the hospital after she'd been hit on the head and left unconscious in her wrecked car—
had come with a police guard, round-the-clock protection. And now another police patrol was cruising the streets, watching over Cora Lee.

Dulcie looked up, purring, when Wilma appeared from the kitchen carrying the tea tray—a final comforting touch on a cold afternoon. The little tabby looked around her at the perfection of their small, private world, with the fire casting its warm flickering light across the velvet furniture and over the shelves of books and the bright oil painting of the Molena Point hills and rooftops. As Wilma set the tray at the end of the desk, Dulcie sniffed delicately the aromas of almond bread and lemon Bundt cake; but she kept a polite distance. Some folks might not like cat noses in their dessert. Wilma flashed her an amused look and cut two tiny slices for her, slathering on whipped cream. Wilma was wearing a new turquoise-and-green sweatshirt, printed in a ferny leaf pattern, and her gray-white hair was sleeked back with a new turquoise clip.

“You spoil her,” Cora Lee said sleepily, watching Wilma set Dulcie's plate on the blotter. “What about the kit? Can she have some?” She stroked the kit, who, at the sound of knife on plate, had come wide awake. Cora Lee was dressed in a creamy velvet robe, loose and comfortable, covering her bandages.

“Both cats will feast,” Wilma said, preparing a second plate, “while you and I wait politely for our guests.”

Cora Lee shivered, pulling the afghan closer around her. “A week in the hospital, and I still feel weird and disoriented.”

“It's the residue of shock, from the surgery,” Wilma said. “Plus the shock of what happened—of someone
intentionally hurting you, and of seeing Fern dead.”

Dead, Dulcie thought, after maybe Cora Lee had idly wished something of the kind for Fern. That wouldn't be easy to live with.

Certainly Cora Lee was still pale, her color grayish, her ease of movement, and lithe ways replaced by stiff, puppetlike gestures, though already she had begun a regimen of exercises designed to strengthen her injured muscles. Very likely painful exercises, Dulcie thought, stretching her own long muscles, extending her length with ease and suppleness. She thought of the distress Cora Lee must be experiencing—and was ashamedly thankful suddenly for her own lithe feline body.

“Growing up in New Orleans,” Cora Lee said, “murder wasn't uncommon. It was ugly, but we accepted it. Even as a child, street murder, gang murder, drug-related killings, we were well aware of them.

“But here, in the village that I chose for its small-town gentleness and safety, murder and violent attack seem to me far more shocking.” Cora Lee smiled. “I guess I haven't come to terms with that yet,” she said lightly.

“We should not have to come to terms with it,” Wilma said. “And if you hadn't been bringing the kit home—”

“I would have gone by the Pumpkin Coach anyway. You know I stop every Tuesday morning to see if anything in the window is worth getting in line for.” She looked solemnly at Wilma, her thin, oval face drawn and serious. “I should have driven away when I saw the window was broken, when I saw Fern lying there.

“I got out to see if she'd fallen. I had this silly notion that she had been decorating the window—you know
how they do, different volunteers taking a turn each week. Fern worked for Casselrod's Antiques; I assumed she'd be a natural one to ask. I was so focused on the idea that she had fallen and hurt herself that I didn't think at all to close the car door, to shut the kit in. I felt guilty afterward.

“When I was close to the window and saw the blood, saw the terrible wounds, I knew I should get away. Like a dummy I stood there trying to see back inside the shop, looking for whoever had hurt her. So foolish…

“Then when I turned to the car to phone for an ambulance, there was the pack of letters on the sidewalk. I didn't know what they were, but something, a twinge of excitement, made me snatch them up—and then that man leaped out of the window, from nowhere….”

“And you ran….” Wilma encouraged. It was good for Cora Lee to talk about it, try to get rid of the trauma. “The letters…Old paper, you said….”

“Old and yellowed. The ribbon was faded and sort of shredded. I got only a glance—the handwriting like old copperplate. Then he was after me. I ran, I got up that little walkway and around the corner before he grabbed and hit me and snatched the letters. The pain in my middle was so bad I knew I'd pass out.

“It's strange. Once I thought the kit was there with me. Then later when I woke in the hospital I thought about leaving the car door open and I worried about her.

Cora Lee smiled. “Detective Garza didn't know how I could outrun the guy as far as I did, could get clear around to the back street—I told him I run at the sports center. When the guy did catch me, when he grabbed
me, I really don't remember all of that clearly. I don't remember how I got into the alley where the police found me.”

She looked at Wilma, frowning. “Just…him hitting me, grabbing the letters, twisting my hand. I remember falling, doubling up with the pain, and I heard a car take off. I don't know who called the police. A woman, they told me. They said she made two calls. I suppose it was someone in one of the upstairs apartments, but no one knows who. I'd like to thank her.”

On Cora Lee's lap, the kit rolled over purring and looked up at her with a little curving smile. And Dulcie thought,
Careful, Kit. Be careful
. She watched Cora Lee with apprehension.

If Cora Lee, in her deepest mind, remembered that the kit was there with her, licking her face, did she remember, in some lost dream, the kit speaking to her? Remember three cats crowding around her, talking about her? Did unconscious people hear and remember what was said in their presence? Some people thought so, even some doctors thought they did—but Cora Lee mustn't. Enough people already shared their secret; they didn't need anyone else knowing, even a person they liked as much as Cora Lee French.

Besides Wilma and Clyde and Charlie, Kate Osborne knew about them. They didn't see Kate often; and Kate would never ever tell their secret, one that was so close to her own. But one other person knew, as well—a sadist now locked in San Quentin, a man who had broken out once and followed Kate, surely meaning to kill her just as he had wanted to kill Dulcie and Joe.

Dulcie watched the kit, on Cora Lee's lap, licking the last specks of cake and cream from her whiskers.

“I'm surprised she doesn't make herself sick.” Cora Lee said. “She ate like that at my house, too.”

Wilma laughed. “Nothing seems to bother her. Apparently she has the same cast-iron constitution as Dulcie and Joe.”

“Maybe they're a special breed.” Cora Lee stroked the kit. “Certainly this little one is more intelligent than most cats, she seems to know everything I'm saying.”

The kit glanced up at Cora Lee, then looked at Dulcie guiltily. Cora Lee seemed unaware of having said anything alarming; her expression was completely innocent. Watching her, Dulcie started when the doorbell rang.

Wilma rose to answer it, hurrying Mavity and Susan in out of the cold fog. Mavity's uniform of the day sported pink rickrack around the white pant cuffs and collar. Over this she wore a zippered green sweater, and her frizzled gray hair was covered by a pink scarf damp with mist.

Susan Brittain was snuggled in a brown sweatshirt over her jeans, and a tan jacket, her short white hair curly from the fog. Gabrielle came up the walk behind them, her smart cream pants suit well tailored, probably fashioned by one of her seamstresses. The three women crowded around the fire and around Cora Lee, making a fuss over her, though they had visited her in the hospital only the day before, taking her flowers and the latest magazines that Wilma had good-naturedly carted home again this morning. On the way home, Wilma had driven Cora Lee by the police station to talk with Detective Garza again. Then at home, she had had a nice lunch waiting. Dulcie herself had curled up on the afghan with the kit while Cora Lee had a long nap.

Gabrielle helped Wilma serve the coffee, then sat down at the end of Cora Lee's chaise. “Did the doctor say whether—say when you can go on with the play? I've started your costume.”

“Will there still be a play?” Cora Lee said, surprised. “But they won't want me, they'll put out a call for new tryouts. Truly,” Cora Lee said, “with Fern dead, in such an ugly way, I feel ashamed to think about the play.” Coloring faintly, she looked up at Susan, where she stood before the fire. “Ashamed that I would still want to do Catalina,” she confessed softly.

“Feeling guilty?” Susan said.

“I suppose. Because I did so want that part.”

“You're not responsible for Fern's death,” Susan said.

“I can't help feeling guilty, though, because I surely wished her no good the night of the tryouts.”

“Wishing didn't kill her,” Wilma said sharply.

“And whatever debt the Traynors owed Fern Barth,” Susan told her, “to make them give her the lead, that's over now.”

“Well, they won't want me,” Cora Lee said. “Vivi Traynor won't.”

“What did the doctor say?” Mavity asked. “How soon will you feel right? How soon can you sing again?”

Wilma said, “There's a lot of muscle tightening around the incision. She'll be stiff for a while, and hurting, and fluids will collect there. The doctor wants her to be careful so it doesn't go into pneumonia. He's told Cora Lee not to take any fill-in restaurant jobs until she's completely healed.”

Cora Lee touched her side. “If anyone wanted me—if Sam Ladler wanted me bad enough to arrange it, I'd be ready. Two or three weeks, I could be ready to rehearse. But I…” Her face reddened. “That won't happen.”

Gabrielle said, “Were you able to help the police? To give them information that would be useful?” She fiddled nervously with her napkin. “I hope Detective Garza doesn't feel that you were involved in Fern's death in some way?”

“Why would Garza say that?” Wilma asked. “Though, in fact, he has no way to know at this point. Until he's sorted through the evidence, he has only Cora Lee's word. He has to wait for the lab tests, has to remain detached.”

“I suppose,” Gabrielle said. “But Captain Harper knows Cora Lee.”

“That really doesn't matter,” Cora Lee said. “Wilma's right.”

“But,” Mavity said, “what exactly did happen? The part you can talk about? It was all so confusing. The paper said there were blood splatters in the back room and on those three wooden chests, that there was a fight back there. I don't—”

Wilma put her hand on Mavity's. “Cora Lee doesn't need to talk about this anymore.”

“I'm sorry,” Mavity said contritely. “Of course you don't.”

“In fact there's very little that Cora Lee is free to discuss,” Wilma added.

“But those three carved chests,” Gabrielle began, “Catalina Ortega-Diaz's letters…”

“No one knows,” Wilma said, “if any of the letters have survived all these years. Those letters could be nothing but dust.”

Gabrielle put her hand on Wilma's. “I…have something to tell you.” She looked shy and uncomfortable. “I didn't before because…Well, I hadn't intended to do anything about it—I didn't do anything about it, so I didn't think it mattered.”

They all looked at her.

“When I was in New York and stopped to see Elliott, he was more than cordial. He fixed lunch for me—Vivi had gone out—and he wanted to talk with me about Molena Point.” She sipped her coffee, looking down as if finding it hard to tell her friends whatever was bothering her.

“Elliott told me about the Spanish chests, about the research. He said he had been corresponding with a museum that had one of the chests, and that it had contained three of Catalina's letters. He thought there might be other chests still around, with letters hidden in them—a false bottom, something like that. He told me they would be worth ten to fifteen thousand dollars each.

“He wanted me to look for similar chests when I got back to the coast. He said that if I found any, he would handle selling them to the highest bidder, and we could split the money—that I would be acting as his agent.

“I didn't like the idea. The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to do that. I told him I'd think about it, but when I got home I wrote him a note, said I wasn't interested, that I was sorry he had told me.

“I was up front with him; I told him about Senior Survival and that we were shopping on our own for an
tiques. I said it wouldn't be fair to you if I were to be shopping for someone else.

“He never answered my letter. And then when they arrived he didn't get in touch. I felt awkward about it, but what could I do. I feel awkward about doing the costumes, about working with him. And I suppose I ought to talk with Captain Harper. Just…to fill him in?” she said, looking at Wilma.