Cat Striking Back (15 page)

F
RANCES AND
E
D
Becker's house was a two-story, cream-colored stucco with dark brown window trim and a black slate roof that was always slippery in wet weather. The cats didn't need daylight to know that the lawn was neatly mowed, the bushes trimmed to perfect spheres that they, personally, thought ugly and unnatural—how could one hide or take shelter under a bush trimmed like a bowling ball? Tansy led them straight through the cat door into the garage where dishes of kibble and a bowl of water were laid out beside two cat beds. The Beckers had two orange-and-white cats, and though neither was present, their scent was heavy and fresh. There was no cat door from the garage into the house.

“They don't want mouse trophies under the furniture,” Tansy said. “Frances can't stand the thought of mouse guts on her imported rugs.” She looked up at the pedestrian door that led into the house. “We can try this, sometimes she leaves it unlocked because the garage is locked.”

Leaping up, Joe swung from the knob and pawed at the dead bolt, but at last he dropped down again, shaking his bruised paw.

“Come on then,” Tansy said, “there's another way.” She led them outside and around the house to the front. In the daytime, the front door would be seen from the street, but at night the soft yard lights left it in shadow. There was no one about nor could they see anyone standing at a nearby lighted window.

The front door was flanked by two tall, narrow panels of glass, each covered by a decorative wrought-iron panel. The pale cat, leaping up and clinging to the iron curlicues, reached a deft paw through and pressed at the sliding window until she had pushed it open.

“They used to leave it open for me.
She
did. He wouldn't bother.”

Slipping inside, the cats paused in a large entry hall, their paws sinking into a thick oriental rug. A tall, lush schefflera plant in a blue pot filled one corner. A narrow teak table stood against the opposite wall beside a rosewood bookcase holding small, carved boxes. A large, intricate basket stood on the floor before it, in an artful arrangement. The dining room was to their left past the schefflera plant, a formal room with deep blue walls and a pale, carved dining set. Beyond it they could glimpse the kitchen. The living room was straight ahead, blue walls, a high, raftered ceiling, and a bank of tall windows. To their right, past an open stairway that led to the second floor, was a hall and, Tansy said, two more bedrooms. Between these was the door of a locked closet; they could see the
dead bolt running through the slit between the door and molding. But Frances had left the key in the lock.

“For the cleaning crew,” Tansy said. “She always did that, she wants it dusted. A huge closet, stacked with sealed boxes and long packages wrapped in brown paper. I used to play and hide in there—until once I got locked in. I was so scared. I cried for hours before Frances found me and let me out.” She padded into the living room, onto another deep Persian rug.

“Handmade,” Dulcie said, flipping up one corner with careful claws and examining the weave. “No machine made these.”

“How do you know such things?” Tansy said.

Dulcie showed her the uneven weave. “From library books,” she said. “Late at night when the library's closed and no one's there. And my housemate, Wilma, knows about antiques.” She admired the sofa and easy chairs, upholstered in tiny, intricate patterns with a primitive flavor. She examined the small carved tables. “Old and handmade,” she said, sniffing them. “And expensive.”

To Joe, the furnishings seemed nice enough but it was just a handsome room, large and comfortable. Beside him, Kit seemed nervous, peering out the windows, scanning the trees and bushes that flanked the dim patio. Tansy prowled among the furniture, sniffing longingly the scents she remembered. They prowled all the rooms looking for anything that seemed disturbed, for any space conspicuously empty, or for small indentations in a rug where some piece of furniture had been removed, looking for anything that Charlie might have missed. A photograph of Ed and
Frances Becker stood on the dining room buffet, Ed tall and darkly handsome and smiling, Frances nearly as tall, a slim, gentle-looking woman with brown hair wound in a French twist. Frances was an accountant, and Ed worked for the California Department of Children's Services.

“He doesn't seem the type to be a children's caseworker,” Dulcie said disapprovingly. “Not with those movie-star looks and that too charming smile—and his eye for other women.”

“Are all humans like that?” Tansy said.

“Like what?” said Joe, turning to look at her.

“Catting around,” said Tansy smartly. “Ed Becker and Theresa Chapman,” she said knowingly. “And Ed Becker and Rita Waterman, too, with her fancy jewelry. Do all humans do that?”

“Where did you get that expression?” said Joe sharply.

“I guess from humans,” Tansy said contritely.

Joe twitched a whisker and turned away to the hall. They had found nothing in the living room that seemed missing or out of place. He stood considering the door to the linen closet. Leaping up, he swung on the knob until he had turned it, and turned the key, and with a violent kick of his hind paws he swung the door open, revealing a deep space with shelves on three sides, all crowded with brown-paper packages and sealed boxes.

“What is all that?” Dulcie said.

“Frances calls them accessories,” Tansy told her. “Rugs and vases and little tables. She loves to change the house all around, move all the furniture, lay out new rugs while she sends the others to the cleaners. Three times when I
was here, she rearranged the whole place, even every vase, every book.
He
wouldn't help her, he left the house until she was done.”

“But how did she…,” Dulcie began, then went silent, listening to a faraway sound from the hills, to the distant yodel of coyotes.

“You won't go home tonight,” Kit told Tansy.

The scruffy little cat shrugged. “They're far away, and the moon's bright.”

Joe and Dulcie and Kit looked at the little mite, all thinking the same. If ever there was coyote bait, she was it. How could this small waif expect to escape a pack of hungry predators?

“They have pups,” Tansy said. “Can't you hear them? The parents won't wander when the pups are learning to hunt, they stand guard, I've watched them. Besides,” she said, “I won't be alone, Sage will be waiting for me.” And she smiled that cocky smirk that seemed so out of place in the shy little cat.

“He'll be mad, he was mad when I left him there by that house where they're digging, where all the dirt is piled. But even so, he'll wait for me,” she said with assurance.

Kit looked at her jealously. Did Tansy know Sage better than she did, even though she and Sage had grown up together? Pulling the closet door closed behind them, she followed Joe as he impatiently headed up the stairs to prowl the four upstairs bedrooms.

The cats found nothing on that floor that seemed out of order. They were thinking this was all a wild-goose chase when Joe caught that elusive scent again, that puzzling whiff that smelled like catmint.

He'd thought he smelled it in the Chapman house, but it was so faint he couldn't be sure. And again in the Waterman house he wasn't sure, with the lingering smell of the old dog and the scent of Rita's perfume. They galloped back down the stairs and, having found nothing amiss, they left the Beckers' house, slipping out into the night through the wrought-iron grid beside the front door. Sliding the glass closed, they headed for the Longley house.

“We can never get in
there,”
Tansy said. “I tried enough times, I even tried the attic.”

“But the Longleys have cats,” Dulcie said.

“Three,” said Tansy. “They're kept inside when she's gone. When she's home, she opens a window, or sometimes the back slider for them.
Then
I could get in. But I was never sure when I could get out again.”

Eleen Longley taught at the local college. She was an attractive, lively woman, slim and with long, mousy, fine-textured hair that seemed to catch in every breeze. Earl was an architect; Ryan said his work was all right if he'd stick to the engineering aspects, if he didn't try to design anything new and interesting. When Clyde suggested that her remark was sarcastic, she said, no, that was fact, that many architects weren't talented at both creative design and engineering, and that was too bad.

“There has to be some way in,” Kit said stubbornly.

Tansy said, “If we can get in, we'll know right away if something's missing, I know where the treasures are. They have drawings by famous architects and books locked up in a big glass case and a whole cabinet of little glass domes with pictures inside. Pictures of humans
doing
things,”
she said, turning her face away with embarrassment. “She calls it porn…porn…”

“Pornography?” Dulcie said. “A schoolteacher collects pornographic paperweights? Oh, my.”

“They talk about how much they're worth. They talk a lot about money and what things are worth—when they're not fighting. They fight a lot, and then the cats hide.”

“Come on,” Kit said, “I've seen a window at the back, once I watched a mockingbird pecking at the glass.” She took off around the side of the house, plunged into a bougainvillea vine, and clawed her way up between its swinging tendrils and sharp spikes. High up, she crawled out again onto a second-floor balcony that was not more than a foot wide. In the thin, shifting moonlight as clouds blew over, she was hardly visible among the balcony's changing shadows. The others swarmed up behind her, under the decorative rail and onto the narrow ledge. Above them was a small bathroom window, maybe four feet wide but only a foot high, that made the cats smile. Joe and Dulcie and Kit had shimmied in through more than one small, high window, always feeling smug at discovering an entrance inaccessible to humans, which was innocently left unlocked.

T
HE GRAVE WITHIN
the pit was finally deep enough. The earth he'd removed stood piled at one end. He climbed out, changed shoes at the edge of the pit, and, just to be safe, he put the boots and shovel against the wall where he'd found them. He'd be back soon, but what if someone came while he was gone to get the car? Moving out through the side door, he left it unlocked. Imagining that cat prowling around, he made sure it was tightly shut.

It was harder climbing back up the hill, he was worn out from digging and the climb took more out of him. The hill was darker, now, too, the moon hidden behind blowing clouds. Were those rain clouds? He didn't like the thought of maybe a heavy rain, of water flooding down the hill into the hole he'd dug. Of water filling her grave before it rose high enough to run out through the drainpipes at either end of the pit. Earlier, he hadn't thought of that.

Scrambling up through the woods, he tripped in the tall, tangled grass. He wondered if, trampling the grass,
he was leaving a trail. But why would anyone look for a trail? Why would anyone be interested? In the morning when they entered the garage, they'd see nothing to alarm them. The pit would be just as they'd left it.

Reaching the car, he thought he could already smell the beginning of putrefaction, and that made him sick. But maybe that was his imagination, maybe that was his fear and guilt returning to taunt him.

He waited for some time, watching the area, before he pulled the car down, backed it into the drive close to the garage and opened the trunk. He didn't want to touch her. When he reached to pull her out, the blanket slid off. Her body was stiff but her arms and legs were limp, and she was hard to move. He tucked the blanket around her as best he could, then lifted her. He didn't like this, the changes in her body frightened him. With distaste he carried her around the side of the garage and in through the pedestrian door. Again he locked it behind him.

She was so heavy. She was a slim person, but now her weight seemed nearly unmanageable. He pulled the blanket back around her where it wanted to slide off. Carrying her over his shoulder, he knelt beside the top of the ladder and stepped down. It was hard to balance her and balance himself and swing down onto the first rung. He didn't want to shove her over into the pit, didn't want to hear the body fall. Clinging to the side of the ladder with one hand, with her awkwardly over his shoulder, he was able to carry her down. He tripped on the third rung and nearly fell.

Clumsily he knelt and lowered her into the grave. He left her lying there while he returned to the driveway to move the car.

Getting in, careful to close the door silently, he drove back up the hill to the crest and pulled off the street again, in among the cypress trees. The wind had risen, blowing the clouds away; the hillside and yard below were lighter now, easing his descent but making him more visible. Moving down the hill he tripped on a fallen branch and fell, hurting his knee and hand. Why had he taken off the gloves, stuffed them uselessly in his pocket? Was he bleeding? If the skin of his hand was torn, where he'd carried her, would some infection get into the wound despite the blanket that he'd draped over her? Would bacteria already be growing in her, to get on him and infect him? He was sweating, his shirt sticking to him. He was all nerves, tense and jumpy, afraid someone would come along before he could bury her, before he could shift the dirt back over her, before he could get away. There, by the driveway, did something move?

But no, it was only shadows from the blowing clouds moving across the torn-up yard. Reaching the narrow strip of raw earth along the side of the garage, he moved inside quickly, watching to see that nothing fled in with him, past his feet. Again he locked the door and then changed into the boots. When he looked toward the window, it was empty, there was nothing there to bother him.

But now he wished he could see the cat, could make sure it was there and hadn't slipped inside with him. Or was it outside, sniffing at the door and listening to the small sounds as he descended the ladder? At the bottom, as he picked up the shovel, he glanced again at the window and the cat was back, crouched on the sill staring in at him as it had before, intent and still.

But it was only a cat, a dumb beast. Forget it, pay no attention to it. His hands on the shovel were so sweaty he couldn't hold it right. Trying to move the loose earth to hide her, he spilled more dirt over his feet and into the muddy boots than down onto her body. The weight of dirt had slid the blanket off her. He didn't like to look at her face and bare chest and belly, livid where collected blood had darkened. When he looked up again he was staring directly into the cat's eyes.

The beast's cold scrutiny seemed to elevate his distress at seeing her for the last time, at seeing her slowly disappear beneath his shovelfuls of dirt, seeing her slowly hidden by the weight of the earth, and trapped there. Thinking of her sealed in that small hole that would soon be closed forever, it was all he could do to not abandon the grave and run.

He kept on mechanically shoveling dirt until the grave was filled, and then he carefully arranged the black drainpipes to run the length of the pit, just as he'd found them. Climbing up the ladder, he changed shoes, set the boots at the edge of the pit while he took off the coveralls and hung them up, then set the shovel as he'd found it. Leaving the garage he paused to painstakingly lock the door behind him with the lock picks. He didn't see the cat in the moonlit yard. Quickly he climbed the hill to his car and locked himself in. Foolish, this terror, but he couldn't help it. He began to wonder if the cat could have slipped into the car behind him when he opened the door. The back of his neck crawled as he peered into the backseat and then got out and looked under the seats.

When at last he was convinced that it hadn't followed him up the hill, he got back in the driver's seat. He was
alone, the trunk was empty, even the blanket was buried where it wouldn't be found. He was about to start the engine and head out, take the car up to the rented garage and get the RV, when he realized he'd left the boots standing at the lip of the pit, that he hadn't put them back where he'd found them, that he'd taken them off, put on his shoes, and, in too much of a hurry, had left them there.

Planning. Careful planning.
She'd been so meticulous about planning. Shoving the flashlight in his pocket he headed back down the hill, his chest tight, his mouth dry.

He picked the lock again, his hands shaking, let himself in, slipped his shoes off at the threshold, moved inside in his stocking feet. Shielding the flashlight with his hand, he shone it on the lip of the pit, picking out the boots, then looked around for anything else he'd left out of place. He was reaching for the boots to put them back by the wall when his beam swung up, catching the white shape at the window. He held the light there in a rictus of fear. The cat's pale fur bristled, its tail was huge, its eyes blazing in the light. Dropping the boots, he snatched up a hammer from the table and in a frenzy of hate threw it hard at the beast. The window shattered with an explosion like gunfire, glass showering as bright as embers and the cat disappeared into the night.

He lowered his light, stood numb and shaken, and couldn't breathe.

At last, steadying himself, he replaced the boots against the wall, and again looked around for anything else he'd left amiss. When he was sure that everything was in place he fled, silently shutting the door, pausing to go through the tedious process of locking it while looking and listen
ing for the cat and praying he'd killed it. When the door was locked, he climbed the hill, started the engine, and hauled out of there, heading for the rented garage.

 

D
OWN BESIDE THE
garage, Sage crawled away from the broken glass and the fallen hammer and moved deep among the bushes, easing himself down on the cool ground. He wanted to lie quietly, he hurt bad and he was bleeding. He had never trusted humans and now he hated them.

He'd been hunting, minding his own business and waiting hopefully for Tansy after she'd gone off with those village cats. He was angry with her because she'd defied him but still he'd waited—and now he wished she were there, now he needed her.

He'd been curious when he saw the man leave the parked car, moving so stealthily, and slip down the hill and into the garage. Leaping onto the lumber pile beside the window he'd looked in, had watched him digging, making the pit deeper and then in a little while had watched him carry a dead woman in there and that had frightened him, a naked dead woman with a blanket wrapped around her. He'd watched him bury her, and he knew two things: This secret burial would be very wrong in the law of the clowder. They did not bury their dead secretly, there was always a ceremony. And he knew from the village cats that such behavior was equally against the law of the human world.

Uneasily, he had watched the man bury her, and when the man looked up, his face filling with fear, that had
pleased Sage. He had watched him as he nervously filled the grave with dirt, had seen him leave and return. It was then, when the man shone the light on him, that he had bristled up, half angry and half amused by the human's fear, had made himself big and wild, and that was when the man's face contorted with rage and he grabbed the hammer and threw it.

He hadn't been quick enough, the glass shattered and the hammer struck him, and now he lay beneath the bushes hurting very bad and wishing Tansy was with him. Wishing he had someone to care that he was hurt, and to help him.