Cat Telling Tales (19 page)

Kit said, “Debbie's nephew, Billy, told Max Harper that Debbie never wrote to Hesmerra, that Debbie would have nothing to do with her mother.” And Kit burned to tell Joe and Dulcie that there
were
letters, that either Billy had lied or he didn't know about them. Between this new bit of intelligence, and the presence of Pan himself, Kit was so wired she could barely settle in Pedric's arms, as Pan asked Misto for a tale. This was the story Misto told, of a deep cold winter such as Kit could hardly imagine.

“In a village five centuries before Dickens's London, in the frozen cold of winter in a cottage as rude as a cow byre, a child huddled alone, chilled on the icy hearth, her father gone to fight the invaders. The cries beyond the sod walls and banks of frozen snow were the cries of pain and death. The child hugged herself with fear and cold; the only movement in the dim hut was that of a half-wild village cat, as he crept to the child and lay up against her, to share his meager warmth. She put her arms around him, and only when the shouts of the hordes drew close did the cat rouse the child, hissing and pawing; he led her out into the dark and snowbound streets, and quickly on beneath a hill of frozen snow that covered a village haymow. He led her deep into the heart of the hay, where the fermenting heap had made its own warmth. There they remained huddled as the night passed, until the screams of the dying, and the trample of hooves, at last grew faint.

“At dawn the Huns had vanished, and child and cat came out. Beside the hill of snow and hay lay a warrior, dead. The child's own father lay there, the reins of his steed tethered among his armor. The child wept as the cat took the reins, freed the mount, and leaped into the saddle. When he pulled the child up before him, he was a cat no more, but a fine young knight dressed in catskins, with a lashing tail. And the child . . . Her cheeks grew rosy, her frail body bloomed stronger, until her beauty shone with the light of love, out over all the bodies of the dead.

“Together they left that place, knight and damsel. They rode away in the dawn to where the land grew warm and sweet and the crops lay untouched by fire. There they gathered around them strong warriors and kind, they gathered a fine army, and there among plenty they waited, armed and strong, to turn away the Goths or to slaughter them,” Misto ended, his golden eyes smiling at Kit.

The evening ended, too, with Kit still in Pedric's arms, looking back over her shoulder where Pan and Misto stood together in the open doorway. The wind had died, but, strangely, the night air felt as cold as that medieval winter. As she looked back at the two tomcats, she could see the hearth fire blazing behind them, in a scene that seemed as magical to the tortoiseshell as Misto's ancient tales. And then Pedric was slipping into the car, holding her, and home they went through the cold night to their own warm house, Kit carrying the tales with her, carrying dreams with her of times long past—and, perhaps, of amazing times yet to be known.

21

I
t was earlier that evening, the icy wind rattling the trees and fingering down among the darkening cottages and shops, when Debbie Kraft and the little girls returned to MPPD. They came in shivering in their thin coats. Maybe because of her long wait and having to return, Debbie seemed chastened. She was silent as a deputy fingerprinted her and then ushered her and the children back to Max's office.

The two cats were sprawled on Max's couch when, over the intercom, the dispatcher announced her. Now, at her approach, Dulcie slipped beneath the credenza, but Joe wasn't in a mood to move. He stayed where he was, but the next minute he was sorry, when Vinnie bolted in ahead of Debbie, spied the tomcat and grabbed him up, nearly strangling him.

“Why is Ryan's cat in here? Why is this cat always in the police station? Is it lost?
I
know where it lives,” she said, staring up boldly at the chief, squeezing Joe so hard it was all he could do not to bite the kid's grubby fingers. What was this preoccupation with cats? She didn't even like cats. He remained very still, trying to keep his claws sheathed. Not easy. Passive acceptance wasn't in his nature, he wanted to bloody the little brat.

Debbie pushed in, with Tessa behind her. The little girl slipped into the nearest leather chair where she curled up like a sleepy kitten. Debbie tossed her jacket and purse on the couch and sat down huffily, scowling at Max as she wiped the last smear of fingerprinting ink on the leather cushion, then reached into her purse for a tissue. Vinnie, still clutching Joe, squirmed up next to her. Joe pushed his hard paws into her bony chest, finally growling as she wriggled to get settled. Vinnie didn't see Dulcie peering up from beneath the credenza, whiskers twitching, green eyes bright as the tabby tried her best not to laugh aloud.

“I came in to be fingerprinted,” Debbie said. “They did that. I thought that's all you wanted. What is it now? I have to get back, I have work to do.”

“You arrived in the village when?” Max asked her.

“I told you that, we got to Ryan's last night,” Debbie said.

“I understand you have a key to Alain Bent's house.”

“Alain gave my husband a key. She works with him.”

“She gave Erik the key for what purpose?”

“I suppose in case he needed to pick up papers, sales contracts, like that.”

“And he gave the key to you?”

“No, he went off without it. I didn't want to leave it in the vacant house, and I didn't want to throw it away. I put it in my purse. As long as I had it, I stopped there at Alain's last night to pick up some clothes she borrowed, stopped on the way to the Damens'. What is this, some kind of interrogation?”

“Only a few questions,” Max said easily. “Alain Bent borrowed clothes from you? You were friends, then?”

“No, not close. Once when she flew up to Eugene, they lost her bag. Erik insisted I loan her some things, and she never returned them.”

“She borrowed clothes. Isn't she somewhat taller?”

The irony seemed lost on Debbie. “She's taller, but she's thin. What in the world does that have to do with anything?”

“What kind of clothes did she borrow?”

“A couple of long vests, and some smocky blouses. Things she could manage to get into.”

Max had to hide a smile. This woman didn't even lie well. “When you arrived in town, then, you went into the Bent house to get the clothes. You and the children slept there that night, the night before you went to the Damens'?”

“No. I told you, we went there just before we went to the Damens.” Beside her, Vinnie looked up at her mother and began to fidget. Debbie scowled down at her until Vinnie settled back, Debbie so tense that even her scent had altered. Joe was surprised Max had let the children stay in there, when he'd meant all along to interrogate her. He could have had one of the officers watch them and give Debbie some privacy. But maybe that was his intention, to pressure her, to see if Vinnie, the talkative child, would make some comment and give her mother away.

Though what really pleased Joe was that, while Max had only
his
word that Debbie and the kids had stayed at Alain's and slept there, the chief was taking his word against hers; Max was running with what Joe had told him, and that made him feel pretty good.

Max looked at Debbie a long time, letting the silence build, then abruptly switched the subject. “You said you came here because Erik wouldn't expect you to, that he'd think you'd go somewhere else?” Debbie nodded. “Were you afraid of him?”

Another faint nod.

“Can you tell me why?”

“Sometimes he hit me,” she said sullenly. “When he got really mad, he'd knock me around. I told you that before.”

“What was it about Erik's work that caused friction between you?”

Debbie scowled at him, and looked down at her lap. Max said, “What was it he didn't want made public, that he was afraid you'd talk about?”

She didn't answer.

“It will be easier to tell me now, than to explain later why you withheld information from the police.”

Still, she didn't answer. Beside her, Vinnie was quiet. When she relaxed her grip on Joe, he thought of bolting. He tensed, then decided to stay put, even if she was hot and sweaty. Debbie's brown eyes had gone flat. “Alain and Erik worked most of their real estate listings together.”

“Why would that upset you?”

“I didn't say it upset me.”

Max seemed to change tack again, as if to keep her off balance. “You knew your mother was cleaning the Kraft offices, that she was working with the night crew of Barton's Commercial Cleaning?”

“I knew she worked with some cleaning service. I didn't know she cleaned Erik's offices. How long had she been doing that?”

“Do you have any idea why she wanted to work nights, when she had to leave Billy alone? That must have been hard for them both.”

“Maybe it was the only work she could get. The way she drank. I guess the boy was independent enough, he'd have to be, with no one but my mother to look out for him.”

“You think, then, that it was coincidence she was cleaning the Kraft offices?”

“What else would it be? What choice would she have? I imagine she worked where they told her. After all, she
was
working, despite the drink. Earning enough to buy booze,” she said bitterly.

“Debbie, did your separation from Erik have to do with Alain Bent?”

She didn't reply.

“Were they lovers?” Max asked.

“They . . .” She glanced down at Vinnie, then nodded.

Max sat relaxed in his swivel chair, looking interested but kindly. “And what else about their relationship troubled you?”

Debbie fiddled with her purse, opened it, found a tissue, crushed it in her hand. It took her a while to speak. “They . . . were into some kind of . . . something outside the regular real estate sales. Something they kept secret.” She looked up at him, perhaps not aware she was busily shredding the tissue. “Some kind of transactions that weren't . . . That I don't think were legal.” She glanced down again at Vinnie. “Could we talk about this another time? The children . . . I need to get them home, fix their supper.”

“We can talk again,” Max said. “Do you think Perry Fowler would have been a part of their scams, if that's what this turns out to be?”

“I have no idea.”

“Was Fowler close to Alain?”

“I really don't know. Fowler is . . .” She shook her head, didn't finish. When Joe thought of Fowler, he thought of a slick, slippery man, pale and soft and evasive.

Max rose, buzzed Mabel, and sent the two children on up the hall to her. “I can't force you to tell me what these scams are about, Debbie. But if this involves criminal activity, you're better off coming to us with what you know, than to face a charge of withholding information, and perhaps as an accessory. You're better off telling us what you know, than facing criminal charges yourself.”

Debbie looked at him uncertainly, coloring with a sudden hesitancy that made Joe wonder.
Was
she telling the truth? Or was she setting Erik up for her own purposes, for something he hadn't done? As Max wrapped up the interview he asked Debbie about Hesmerra's funeral.

“It's just a graveside service,” she said. “Sunday morning at ten, at the Pacific Sea Cemetery. Esther arranged it. Just the family, I guess. But you can come, if you want.” Joe watched from the couch, and Dulcie from her shadowed lair, as Max escorted her out. The cats followed, could see from the hall out the glass door as Debbie hurried the children away to her car; her walk was quick and angry, as if she'd escaped a dominance she found hard to handle.

Why, Joe wondered, hadn't Max questioned her more intensely about just when she
had
arrived in the village and what she
was
doing in Alain Bent's house? Why had he let her sidestep so many questions? Still, though, Max had asked enough to see she was lying, that was clear enough.

Maybe he didn't want to distress her so badly she'd slip back into Alain's to set the house to rights, to clean off fingerprints and any other telltale evidence of her presence before the department had a chance to search the place? She'd have to clear the food out of the refrigerator, Joe thought, carry away the trash, get rid of the wet towels.

Out in front, Davis's car pulled into the parking lot and up to the red curb before the station. The detective got out, gave Max a little crooked grin as she pushed in through the glass door. The scent of cinnamon drifted around her, from the small white bakery bag she carried.

“Just drove Emmylou back to her car,” she said. But clearly she had something more to tell him, and the two headed back to his office, Davis limping badly again. The cats followed, sniffing the aroma of cinnamon buns with an interest that would seem, to the two officers, as natural as if Juana had brought in a bag of live mice; neither officer would imagine the cats' interest lay, rather, in police business, in whatever secrets Emmylou Warren had passed on to Juana Davis.

22

“W
hat do you cats want?” Davis said, opening the bag of cinnamon buns she'd dropped on Max's credenza, and pouring two mugs of coffee. Joe and Dulcie looked at her hopefully, drinking in the cinnamon smell. She broke apart one of the buns onto a napkin, laid it on the floor, put the bag, Max's coffee, on the desk before him. “Emmylou didn't much like being picked up, but nothing seemed off
.
She grumbled about being printed, but she settled in, and let me question her.” Carrying her coffee, she sat down in the leather chair that was still warm from little Tessa Kraft.

“Said she was up the valley at the time of the fire, had pulled off onto a side road, was sleeping in her car, said she heard the sirens. She described her friendship with Hesmerra pretty much as she told you. What made her nervous was when I asked her about breaking into Sammie Miller's place. She claimed to be worried about Sammie but didn't want to file a missing report, said she thought the woman would turn up soon. She sounded more worried about Sammie's cats. I'd like to have a look at the place, but without a missing report we have no cause. I dropped her at her car, told her not to leave the village.”

“She's living in her car,” Max said.

Juana nodded. “I didn't press it. Said she had two cats herself and that John Firetti had taken them in.” Ever since Davis had adopted a kitten, courtesy of Joe and Dulcie, she'd been more aware of the cats that might suffer when she made an arrest or during a domestic dispute. Among all the officers, Davis was quickest to bring in the SPCA or CatFriends to care for the family pets. She had always been willing to help abused women, too, advise them on how to escape to safety. “I called three women's shelters to find Emmylou a place but they're all full. Called Chichi Barbi, they're full, too, extra beds in all four rooms. Chichi has a PI running background checks on the women she's taken in, he's cleared five and they're all working for her.”

Just before Christmas, Chichi and her housemate, Maria Rivas, had bought Charlie Harper's cleaning service. Charlie had started the business with very little money, working out of an old, used VW van badly in need of repair. When she sold the business it included four new vans, a staff of sixteen cleaning women and two handymen. Now Charlie had the workday to herself, no more bookkeeping, no more scheduling and unforeseen disasters. She had time to finish the drawings for her second book, attend to the final editing of the manuscript, and complete five commissions for animal portraits, two of local Thoroughbred stallions, three of champion shorthair pointers. Max said, “What about the boxes in Hanni's garage?”

“We lifted three sets of prints.” She grinned. “Matches for those from the meth house, including the Romero brother we picked up this morning, Raul. No ID yet on the others. Kathleen's canvassing the local retailers, running the bar codes on the chemicals. A long shot, to find a clerk who remembers a Latino customer with a big purchase, but worth trying.”

Joe wondered how long it would take to get an ID on the other prints. Depended on what was in the system, on how backed up the lab was, and how complicated those particular prints were to identify. Licking the last cinnamon crumbs from his paws, he wondered if the hoods from the meth house had had some warning about the raid, giving them time to move their chemicals to Hanni's garage. Hanni had left the house unattended for nearly two weeks while she finished up an extensive interior design installation, plenty of time for them to make the shift. He kept wondering, too, about a connection between the meth house, Alain Bent's place, and Sammie Miller's cottage—and, wondering why Emmylou
had
broken in.

Licking their cinnamon-flavored whiskers, the cats curled up on Max's Persian rug and pretended to doze, as if lulled asleep by the monotonous drone of the officers' voices. But when Davis left and Max headed for Dallas's office, they hurried up the hall, their minds on those three neighborhood houses and on Sammie Miller's jimmied front door.

Outside, the night was still. An icy cold radiated through the door, nearly frosting their noses. A green van stood in the red zone just outside, its back doors open and a courier in a green and white uniform emerging, carrying a brown manila envelope. As he ducked his head beneath the dripping oak, and pushed the glass door open, the cats slipped quickly out past his hard shoes. The parking lot was wet, reflecting the overhead vapor lamps in yellow pools. Scrambling up the wet trunk of the oak to the roof, they headed across the slick tiles, their paws already freezing. “Feels like snow,” Dulcie said.

“Oh, right,” he said, cutting her a look. How many years since the central coast had seen snow flurries? This was California. What felt like snow, and smelled like snow coming, was no more than a fanciful illusion.

“Do you think,” she said, “we should swing by Jolly's alley? I'm more than starved, that cinnamon bun only made me hungrier. If we go by my house, Wilma will start asking questions—she'll worry for sure if we head out again in this weather.”

“She'll worry more if you don't come home.”

“Well, she has to know what's going on,” Dulcie said to ease her conscience. “Maybe she'll think we're still in Max's office, cozy and warm and picking up information.” Wilma Getz was as close with the department as were Ryan and Clyde, she knew about the meth house, and she would already know about the cartons of chemicals. Dulcie, lashing her tail with irritation because her housemate too often looked over her shoulder, swerved away in a sharp detour, heading for Jolly's alley. Joe galloped close behind her, thinking of smoked salmon, crab salad, scraps of rare prime rib—
then
they'd search Sammie Miller's cottage. He wondered, as they dropped down into the picturesque alley, if Emmylou had hidden Hesmerra's metal box there in the house, when she broke in. Would she do that, with cops all over the neighborhood?

He still wasn't sure whether Max had seen the box half hidden in the backseat of Emmylou's car and whether he'd glimpsed the Kraft letterhead sticking out. Wasn't sure what Max had thought at seeing
him
there. He told himself the chief was used to seeing him in strange places—he was, after all, an annoyingly nosy tomcat. Given the chief's matter-of-fact take on life, what else could Harper think?

“Oh, my,” Dulcie said, licking her whiskers at the smell of roast chicken drifting up to them from Jolly's alley. Scrambling down a potted bottlebrush tree into the brick-paved alley, they were about to make a dash for the food bowl when, from the shadows, a dark little shape leaped away and vanished, a little black-and-white cat, diving behind a potted geranium where, in fact, they could easily corner the little thing. They remained still, hoping it would come out again; they didn't want to scare it all the more. The scent was of tomcat, a little young tomcat.

“Sammie Miller's other cat?” Dulcie said. “Did he have a mustache mark?”

“I don't know,” Joe said. “I'm starved.”

“We'll share,” she said, “we'll leave him some, he'll come out when we're gone. I'll tell Wilma, maybe he'll come out for one of the volunteers.” No one wanted to trap a cat unnecessarily, if he was friendly. And Jolly's alley didn't make good trapping, with so many neighborhood cats stopping in for handouts. Odds were, they'd have to release two dozen cats before they caught this one. Dulcie headed for the bowl, and Joe shouldered in next to her. It took great restraint to leave any chicken for the stray, they slurped up the deli's offering as eagerly as if they, too, were homeless and starving.

When they'd finished, leaving a generous portion, they scaled the bottlebrush tree back to the roof, and waited nearly half an hour for the little cat to come out. When at last he did creep to the bowl, he inhaled their leavings in six big bites. “If they can catch him,” Joe said, “he'll be happy to see his sister, and they'll be fine at Chichi's.” Chichi Barbi's cages, set up in her airy daylight basement between the guest rooms, were large and clean with multiple levels for each cat; the cats, according to Ryan, got plenty of petting and attention from the women Chichi was sheltering. Leaving the young cat licking the bowl, they headed for Sammie Miller's. This was a lot of fuss for a box of business papers that could turn out to be nothing; but something prodded Joe to find it, his instinct about those papers was as urgent as the curiosity of a stubborn cop.

N
o exterior lights burned around Sammie's cottage; Molena Point neighborhoods didn't have streetlights, the only illumination was what homeowners chose to install on their own. Sammie's yard was not only dark but smothered by overgrown bushes clutching the walls, reaching toward the grimy windows. The frame building was no wider than a double garage, maybe six hundred square feet at best. Even from outside, the house had the sour smell of accumulated dirt and rotting wood, a house overripe for a teardown. In better economic times someone would already have bought it, razed it, and be building a new little retreat in its place. Or would have bought several adjoining houses, torn them all down, and built yet another overlarge, too impressive residence; even in this unpretentious neighborhood, every square foot of land was valuable.

The little front porch was no more than a slab of flaking concrete with three cement steps leading up. The front door was painted a dark, sticky color undetectable in the night, sealed with a new hasp and padlock, courtesy of MPPD, where Emmylou had pried the old lock open. There was a small window at either side, but no cat door. Trotting around the side of the house, they pushed downhill through patches of thorny pyracantha bushes, moving to the back where the dropping lot allowed for a taller basement, enough space for another pair of small, dirty windows. Twelve wooden stairs led up to a wooden landing supported by four-by-four pillars. The steps smelled rank and wild. “Raccoons,” they said together, hissing with disgust.

The back door was narrow, decorated with the same dark sticky paint. To the left, a cat door had been cut into the wall, a homemade affair closed by a flap of warped plywood hanging on rusty hinges. Raccoon fur was caught around the edge, where the beasts had pushed inside. “This,” Joe said, “might not be such a breeze, if we corner one of those mothers in there.”

“You want to leave? Wait until the department has a go? If they can get a search warrant. We could tell them we think maybe there might be a box hidden in there and maybe it contains information . . .”

“All right. Enough.” Laying back his ears, he shoved beneath the plywood flap into the kitchen. The place stank of raccoons and, even more viral, it smelled of soured milk and spoiled food from the refrigerator. They paused, listening.

There was no sound, no scuffling or snarling as if they had surprised some rough-furred bandit. The linoleum was gritty beneath their paws, the floor scattered with kibble where the animals had torn open a large bag of dry cat food. A five-foot length of counter held the sink, its dark cabinets featuring the same sticky paint as the front and back doors. The ancient gas stove was small, round cornered, pale enamel with chrome trim, short curved legs and curved feet. It stank of old grease and of the gassy pilot light, those smells blending with the aroma of cat kibble and the stink of raccoon.

A cracked white bowl stood on a rubber mat just inside the cat door. It was empty, licked clean save for two muddy, long-toed pawprints marking the white interior. Together, the cats pawed the cupboards open.

Old dented pots and pans in the bottom, five cans of soup in the top cabinets, a bag of flour with bugs crawling out, and half a dozen ants wandering aimlessly as if discouraged in their hopeless scouting trip. The inside of one cupboard door held a row of cup hooks where Sammie had hung a beer opener, a flat grater, a key on a ring, a set of measuring spoons, and a little rusty strainer. The refrigerator, when Joe swung on the handle and kicked the door open, offered half a loaf of moldy bread, a bottle of curdled milk, a bowl of spaghetti green with mold, three rotten tomatoes. The freezer, the size of the glove compartment in a compact car, held two packs of rotten meat. Had Sammie neglected to pay her bills, even before she vanished? The power company, with so many folks moving away with rent and bills unpaid, had grown rather surly in such matters.

Moving into the front of the house, they found one long room, with a notch cut out for a bathroom that left a narrow sleeping alcove with a brown curtain drawn halfway across. The same dark walls as the kitchen. A fusty gray carpet, gritty beneath their paws. Toppled stacks of newspapers cascaded against the furniture, some of the papers shredded among torn-apart paperback books. Had the raccoons done this? Or had someone else? Rumpled clothes were tossed across a fat, overstuffed couch and matching chair of undetermined color.

The room had four small windows, those each side of the front door, and two artlessly placed in the center of the side wall, half covered by graying lace curtains hanging crookedly. Sammie might have a roof over her head, in contrast to her wandering brother, but this environment seemed far more grim than his open roads. Beneath the smell of raccoons and the smell of dust came, faintly, the hint of young cats, an old and fading scent. No cats were visible. They started at floor level, scenting out like bloodhounds looking for the tin box, trying to pick up a whiff of water-soaked ashes, nosing into every pile of papers, old sweaters and rumpled T-shirts, feeling with careful paws for the smooth cold feel of metal. But only Joe thought the hunt might be worth the effort; Dulcie really didn't think Emmylou would have hidden Hesmerra's box in here, it didn't seem to her a safe place at all—if the papers
were
of any value.

The heavy sideboard and two end tables were coated with the same dark paint as the doors and kitchen cupboards. Had Sammie bought a barrel of the stuff and kept painting until it was all used up?