Cat to the Dogs (5 page)

Get some spine,
Dulcie would think, feeling her claws stiffen.
Don't let Dirken bully you! Send him packing, send the whole tribe packing. Oh,
she wanted to shout,
get a life, Lucinda. Don't just roll over for them! Sell the house, do something wild and extravagant with the money! Go to Europe. Spend it on diamonds. Don't leave a cent to that clan!
Lucinda was so docile that Dulcie wanted to snatch her up
and shake some sense into her; if their roles had been reversed, if Dulcie were bigger than Lucinda, she'd have done it, too.

“You're up mighty early, Aunt Lucinda.”

“I'm always up early, my dear. And what brings you down at this hour?” Lucinda poured fresh tea for herself and sat cradling her cup, looking quietly into the fire as if attempting to hold close around her the tranquillity of her early-morning solitude.

“About an hour ago,” Dirken said, “I thought I heard noises outside. I went out, tramped around. Did you hear anything?”

“Not a thing, my dear. What kind of noise?”

“You must have been dead to the world. When I came in, I knocked at your bedroom door, but I guess you didn't hear me. Why do you lock your bedroom, Aunt Lucinda?”

Lucinda's eyes widened. “Why would you try my bedroom door, Dirken? I lock it because I don't want someone barging in unannounced, certainly not before daylight.”

“A bedroom lock with a key,” Dirken said. “So you can go out and lock it behind you.” He hadn't the decency to apologize for his snooping, or even to look embarrassed; he simply turned his face away, scowling with anger.

“I expect you'll be working on the house again this morning, Dirken?”

The young man rose, heading for the kitchen and his coffee. In the doorway he turned, watching Lucinda, the firelight catching at his red hair. “I must work on it, Aunt Lucinda. The house needs so much repair. So much to do, if we're to save this old place—save your inheritance.”

His tone implied that if he didn't undertake such refurbishing, the house would collapse within weeks, its remains sinking tiredly into the weedy yard, and Lucinda would be out on the street.

Lucinda,
Dulcie thought,
must not know much about houses.
Dirken's repair and replacement of some of the lap siding had been grossly shoddy work. And Dulcie had observed with consid
erable interest his curious method of patching the concrete foundation. It did not appear to her that that little project had anything to do with strengthening the decrepit structure.

She had learned, from watching Clyde and Charlie fix up Clyde's recently purchased apartment building, a good deal about such repairs—though Clyde limited his work mostly to tear-out. But Dulcie had seen how siding should be applied, and how a crumbling foundation looked; she had spent hours lying on the sunny brick patio beside Joe waiting for mice to be dislodged by the workers and observing just such reconstruction operations.

And how arrogant Dirken was about the supposed repairs. His attitude had been, ever since he arrived, not one of tenderness toward his newly widowed aunt, but of confrontation. Not the behavior of a nurturing young relative caring for his uncle's frail old widow, but of a selfish young man out for his own gain.

Nor did the rest of the Greenlaw clan spend any time comforting Lucinda; they were either harassing her or prowling the village on endless sightseeing excursions, rudely fingering the wares in Molena Point's expensive shops, leaving grease stains and torn wrappings, their loud complaints seeming to echo long after they had departed. And in the evenings, in Lucinda's parlor, they were no more pleasant, quibbling about the sale of the house, turning the prefuneral gathering into a bad-tempered brawl.

Send them packing,
Dulcie would think, crouching on the fence, her ears back, her tail lashing. She'd hardly been in the public library in two weeks, where usually she spent several hours a day greeting the patrons and playing with the children. She meant to do better; she was, after all, the official library cat, but she couldn't stop racing across the village to Lucinda's, to watch the drama unfolding there. Some force was building, she thought. A confluence of emotions and events that was just the beginning of a larger drama, she was certain of it. And she didn't want to miss a minute. Whatever lay in Lucinda's immediate future, Dulcie wanted to know about it.

But the most puzzling twist of all was that, while the Greenlaws were so prickly and unpleasant to Lucinda, on the rare evenings that they settled in for a round of Irish storytelling, filling Lucinda's parlor nearly to bursting, something strange happened: their attitudes were totally different. Suddenly the frail parlor seemed no longer in danger of collapse under their fierce emoting. On storytelling nights a kind of magic sprang alive among the Greenlaws. They seemed gentler, easier with one another, nurturing, and warm.

And Lucinda was easier, too. The old woman seemed drawn to the family, clasping her hands at their tales, weeping or laughing with them. They
seemed
a family, then, this obstreperous clan, and Lucinda no longer an outsider against whom they were solidly ranked.

Wilma said it was the old family stories and family history, which Shamas had told so well, that had first drawn Lucinda to him, that Shamas's commitment to the old ways was perhaps the only real thing about him, that surely this had been the strongest tie between the mismatched couple. Every marriage, Wilma said, must have a fabric of shared philosophy to tie it together. Wilma truly believed that. For Shamas and Lucinda, that richness had come from the old myths that had been handed down for generations through the Greenlaw family.

And oh, those tales drew Dulcie. On warm evenings when the parlor windows were open and she could hear the stories, she would slip across the yard and up a half-rotten rose trellis to cling beside the screen, listening.

She could have pushed right on inside beneath the loose screen. Who would wonder at a little cat coming in? But she didn't fancy wandering among those big-booted men and bad-mannered kids with too many hands to snatch at her. The Greenlaws might charm her with their stories, but she didn't trust a one of them.

But how lovely were their Irish tales, filling her with a longing for worlds vanished, worlds peopled with shapeshifters and her
own kind of cat. To hear those stories whispered, hear their wild parts belted out, to hear their wonders dramatized as only an Irishman could tell a tale, those were purr-filled hours. Afterward, she would trot away to join Joe, hunting high on the hills, filled with a deep and complete satisfaction.

These were her stories that the Greenlaws told, she had read and reread them, alone at nighttime in the library, when she had the books to herself; this was her history, hers and Joe's. The Greenlaws didn't know that, and they never noticed a little cat crouched at the window.

Strangely, even the taleteller's language was different on those evenings, the loud Irishmen abandoning the clan's rough speech for the old, soft phrases and ancient words. And there was one old, wrinkled man among them who had such a beguiling way with a story.

“Semper Will,” old Pedric would begin, “he were a packman, and there wadn't no carts their way, 't tracks was all mixey-mirey and yew did need a good pack-donk to get a load safe droo they moors.”

Pedric, unlike his strapping relatives, was thin and bony and wizened; Pedric looked, himself, like an overgrown elven man or perhaps a skinny wizard.

“Will's track was all amuck, then, with gurt reeds a-growing up and deep holes for tha donk to fall in, yes all a-brim with muck…”

Oh, Dulcie knew that tale of the high banks full of burrows that the donkey would pass, and the strange little cats that would appear there, peering out of their small caves.

“All sandy-colored tha little cats was, and wi' green, green eyes.” She knew how those burrows led down and down through dark caverns to other lands, to subterranean mountains and meadows lit by a clear green sky. And Pedric told how the cats were not always in cat form but how, down in that emerald world, a cat might change to a beautiful woman dressed in a silken gown. Oh
yes, Dulcie knew those stories, and, just as she knew that at least one part of them was true, the Irishmen believed fully in their wealth of tales. They believed just as surely as they believed that the earth was round and the moon and stars shone in the heavens. The Celtic tales were a part of the Greenlaws' lives, to be loved as music is loved but to be put aside in their everyday dealings, as a song might be put aside.

Lucinda finished her tea and cookies and rose to carry her tray to the kitchen, seeming hardly aware of the loud barking through the open windows, though Clyde's house seemed to explode with human shouting and canine bawling.

Looking through the leaves, watching Clyde's empty yard, Dulcie heard Joe yowl with rage. Half-alarmed, half-amused, she slipped out from the maple tree and hurried along the fence.

“Take them to…” Joe shouted. “Take them to the pound…That's why I brought them.”

“Don't be stupid!…kill them…” Clyde yelled. And Joe came bolting out the dog door, his ears flat, his yellow eyes slitted with rage. As he crouched to leap the gate, he turned and saw her.

He said nothing. He stood glowering, his ears back, the white strip down his gray face narrowed by anger. Dulcie, ignoring him, flicked her ears, leaped down into the yard, and trotted past him to see for herself. She hurried up Clyde's back steps, her ears ringing with Clyde's shouting and the wild baying.

Nearly deafened, Dulcie poked her head through the dog door.

The room was filled with giant dog legs, huge paws scrabbling, two giant tails whipping against the cabinets. Clyde was racing around the kitchen trying to put collars on two huge dogs, and such shouting and swearing over a little thing like a collar made her yowl with laughter, then yowl louder to get his attention.

He turned to stare at her.

“If you don't shut up, Clyde, and make those dogs shut up, every neighbor on the street is going to be down here!” And of
course the moment she spoke, the two dogs leaped at her. She hauled back a paw to slash them.

They backed off, whimpering.

She paused, and did a double take. She had scared them silly; they cowered against Clyde's legs, rolling their eyes at her.

Why, they were puppies. Just two big, frightened pups—two whining pups the size of small ponies and as thin and pitiful as skinned sparrows.

She slipped in through the dog door and sat down on the linoleum.

They seemed to decide she wouldn't hurt them. They crept to her. Two wet black noses pushed at her, two wet tongues drenched her with dog spit; they were all over her, licking and whining. Oh, what pitiful, lovable big babies. Gently, Dulcie lifted a soft paw and patted their sweet puppy faces.

J
OE FOLLOWED
Dulcie through the dog door, watching half with disgust, half with amusement, as she preened and wove around the pups' legs. She was purring like a coffee grinder. Any other cat, confronted by the two monster dogs—even puppies—would have headed for the tallest tree.

Not Dulcie, of course. She wasn't afraid of dogs. But he hadn't counted on that silly maternal grin, either.

He'd expected her to be disgusted with the rowdy young animals, as most adult cats, or dogs, would be. How ridiculous to see a lovely lady cat, self-contained and sometimes even dignified, certainly of superior intelligence, succumb to this ingratiating canine display. He watched with disgust as the pups licked her face and ears. Not until she was sopping wet did she move away from them, shake her whiskers, and leap to the kitchen table; and still her green eyes blazed with pleasure.

“Puppies, Joe! Clyde, where did you get the huge puppies?” Her peach-tinted paw lifted in a soft maternal gesture. “They're darling! Such cute, pretty pups!”

“They're not darling,” Joe snapped. “They're monsters. Flea-bitten bags of bones. Clyde's taking them to the pound.”

She widened her eyes, twin emeralds, shocked and indignant.

“They are not,” Clyde said evenly, “going to the pound.” He sat down at the kitchen table. “So what's with you? What's the attraction, Dulcie? You're known all over the village as a dog baiter. What…”

“Dog baiter?”

“Of course. No resident dog will confront you. And the tourists' dogs try only once.” Clyde looked hard at her. “You think I don't know about your little games? I know what you do when life gets boring; I've seen you sauntering down Ocean early in the morning when the tourists are walking their pets; I've seen you waltz past those leashed canines waving your tail until some showoff lunges at you.

“I've seen you bloody them, send some poor mutt bolting away screaming. I've seen you smile and trot off licking your whiskers.” Clyde looked intently at the smug little tabby. “So what gives?”

“They're only babies,” Dulcie said haughtily. “Why would I want to hurt babies? Really, Clyde, you can be so unfeeling.” She leaped down to where the pups lay sprawled, panting, on the linoleum. Turning her back on Clyde, she licked a black nose. She couldn't help the maternal warmth that spread over her as she began to wash the two big babies.

Clyde shook his head and stepped past her toward the door, carrying a bucket of trash. Joe, scowling at the silly grin on Dulcie's little, triangular face, muttered something rude into his whiskers and left the scene, pushing out behind Clyde. Let Dulcie play “mama” if that was what pleased her. He was out of there.

Scaling the back fence, he galloped across the village, dodging tourists and cars, heading for Dulcie and Wilma's house, where he could find some peace and quiet without that zoo, and where
Wilma's phone was accessible. If the cops missed that cut line, if they didn't look for it before the wreck was lifted from the canyon and hauled away, the evidence might be lost for good.

Wilma didn't like him and Dulcie meddling in police business any more than Clyde did, but she had better manners. She wouldn't stop him from using the phone.

Trotting past early joggers and a few shopkeepers out watering the flowers that graced their storefront gardens, sniffing the smell of damp greenery and of breakfast cooking in a dozen little cafés, Joe kept thinking of the dead man lying in the wrecked Corvette. A fairly young, apparently well-to-do stranger, and very likely an antique car buff—a man, one would think, who would be closely attuned to the mechanical condition of his vehicle.

Did the guy have some connection in the village, maybe visiting someone? Seemed strange that, just passing through, he would meet his doom at that particular and precarious location.

Whoever cut the brake line had to have known about that double curve. Joe didn't believe in coincidence, any more than did Captain Max Harper.

The question was, who in the village might have wanted this guy dead?

Hurrying beneath the twisted oaks, past shop windows filled with handmade and costly wares or with fresh-baked bread and bottles of local wines, he passed Jolly's Deli and the arresting scent of smoked salmon. But Joe didn't pause, not for an instant. Galloping on up the street to Wilma's gray stone cottage, he made three leaps across her bright garden and slid in through Dulcie's cat door.

Wilma's blue-and-white kitchen was immaculate. The smell of waffles and bacon lingered. He leaped to the counter, where breakfast dishes stood neatly rinsed in the drain. The coffeepot was empty and unplugged. The house sounded hollow.

Heading for the living room and Wilma's desk, he was glad he'd left Dulcie occupied with the pups. She hadn't been in the
best of moods lately—though the pups had evidently cheered her. He didn't like to admit that something might be wrong between them, had been wrong for weeks, ever since the earthquake. Ever since that three
A.M
. jolt when he raced down the street to see if Dulcie was all right, only to meet her pelting toward him wild with worry for him, then wild with joy that he was unhurt. After the quake and the ensuing confusion when people wandered the streets sniffing the air for gas leaks, he and Dulcie had clung together purring, taking absolute comfort in each other; he telling her how he'd heard the bookshelves fall in the spare bedroom as he felt the house rock; she telling him how Wilma had leaped out of bed only to be knocked down like a rag toy. It hadn't been a giant quake—not the Big One—a few shingles fallen, a few windows broken, one or two gas lines burst, people frightened. But at the first tremble, Joe had run out—Rube barking and barking behind him and Clyde shouting for him to come back—had sped away frantic to find Dulcie.

But then a few days later, a kind of crossness took hold of Dulcie, a private, sour mood. She wouldn't tell him what was wrong. She left him out, went off alone, silent and glum. All the clichés he'd ever heard assailed him: familiarity breeds contempt; as sour as old marrieds. He didn't know what was wrong with her. He didn't know what he'd done. When he tried to talk to her, she cut him short.

But that morning, distracted by the idiot puppies, she'd smiled and waved her tail and purred extravagantly.

Mark one down for the two bone bags. Maybe they were of some use.

Now, settling on Wilma's clean blotter atop the polished cherry desk, he could smell the lingering aroma of coffee where, evidently, Wilma had sat this morning, perhaps to pay bills. A neat stack of bill stubs lay beneath the small jade carving of a cat. He could imagine Wilma coming to her desk very early, catching up on her household chores. Beyond the open shutters, the neigh
borhood street was empty, the gardens bright with flowers; he could never remember the names of flowers as Dulcie did. Sliding the receiver off, he punched in the number for the police.

He got through the dispatcher to Lieutenant Brennan, but Captain Harper was out. He didn't like passing on this kind of information to another officer—not that Harper's men weren't reliable. It simply made Joe uncomfortable to talk with anyone but Harper.

Besides, he enjoyed hearing Harper's irritable hesitation when he recognized the voice of this one particular snitch. He enjoyed imagining the tall, leathered, tough-looking captain at the other end of the line squirming with nerves.

Max Harper reacted the same way to Dulcie's occasional phone tips. The minute he heard either of them he got as cross as a fox with thorns in its paw.

“Captain Harper won't be back until this afternoon,” Lieutenant Brennan said.

“That wreck in Hellhag Canyon,” Joe said reluctantly. “I'm sure the officers found that the brake line was cut. Sliced halfway through in a sharp, even line.”

Brennan did not reply. Joe could hear him chewing on something. He heard papers rattle. He hoped Brennan was paying attention—Brennan had been one of the officers at the scene. Maybe they hadn't found the cut brake line, maybe that was why he was uncommunicative.

“There was a billfold, too,” Joe told him. “In the dead driver's hip pocket. Leather. A bulging leather wallet. Did you find that? An old wallet, misshapen from so much stuff crammed in, the leather dark, sort of oily. Stained. A large splinter of broken glass was pressing against it.”

He repeated the information but refused to give Brennan his name. He hung up before Brennan could trace the call; a trace took three or four minutes. He didn't dare involve Wilma's phone in this. She and Harper were friends. Joe wasn't going to throw
suspicion on her—and thus, by inference, cast it back on himself and Dulcie.

Pawing the phone into its cradle and pushing out again through Dulcie's plastic door, he headed toward the hills, trotting up through cottage gardens and across the little park that covered the Highway One tunnel. Gaining the high, grassy slopes, he sat in the warm wind, feeling lonely without Dulcie.

She was so busy these days, spying uselessly on Lucinda Greenlaw. Maybe that was all that was wrong with her, watching Lucinda too much, feeling sad for the old woman; maybe it was her preoccupation with the Greenlaw family that had turned her so moody.

 

All day Joe hunted alone, puzzling over Dulcie. At dusk he hurried home, thinking he would find Dulcie there because Clyde had invited Wilma to dinner, along with Charlie, and Max Harper.

He saw Wilma's car parked in front of the cottage, but couldn't detect Dulcie's scent. Not around the car, or on the front porch, or on his cat door. Heading through the house for the kitchen, he sniffed deeply the aroma of clam sauce and twitched his nose at the sharp hint of white wine. Pushing into the kitchen, he looked around for Dulcie.

Clyde and Charlie stood at the stove stirring the clam sauce and tasting it. Charlie's red hair was tied back with a blue scarf rather than the usual rubber band or piece of cord. Her oversized, blue batik shirt was tucked into tight blue jeans. She had on sleek new sandals, not her old, worn jogging shoes.

Wilma was tossing the salad, her long white hair, tied back with a turquoise clip, bright in the overhead lights. The table was set for four. Two more places, with small plates and no silverware, were arranged on the counter beside the sink, on a yellow place mat. That would be Charlie's doing; Clyde never served so fancy. The sounds of bubbling pasta competed with an Ella Fitzgerald
record, both happy noises overridden by the loud and insistent scratching of what sounded like a troop of attack dogs assaulting the closed doggy door. He wondered how long the plywood barrier would last before those two shredded it.

“I just fed them,” Clyde said defensively. “Two cans each. Big, economy cans.”

Joe made no comment. He did not want to speak in front of Charlie.

Charlie knew about him and Dulcie—she had known ever since, some months ago, she saw them racing across the rooftops at midnight and heard Dulcie laughing. That was when she began to suspect—or maybe before that, he thought, wondering.

Well, so that one night leaping among the village roofs, they'd been careless.

Charlie was one of the few people who could put such impossible facts together and come up with the impossible truth. And it wasn't as if Charlie was only a casual acquaintance; she and Clyde had been going together seriously for nearly a year. Joe liked her. She treated him with more respect than Clyde ever did, and she was, after all, Wilma's niece. But still he couldn't help feeling shy about actually speaking in front of her, not even to ask where Dulcie was.

“She's on the back fence,” Wilma said, seeing him fidgeting. “Where else? Gawking into Lucinda's parlor.” Wilma shook the salad dressing with a violence that threatened Clyde's clean kitchen walls.

Joe, pretending he didn't care where Dulcie was, leaped to the kitchen counter and stared at his empty plate, implying he didn't need Dulcie, that he'd eat enough pasta for both.

“I talked with Harper,” Clyde said. “About an hour ago. I want you to behave yourself tonight.”

Joe widened his eyes, a gaze of innocence he had practiced for many hours while standing on the bathroom sink.

“Harper says he had another of those snitch calls this morn
ing. Guy wouldn't give his name. Left the message with Brennan—something about a cut brake line.” He gave Joe a long, steady stare.

Joe kept his expression blank.

“He says this one was a dud. Totally off track. Said that after the call, two officers went back down Hellhag Canyon for another look.”

Joe licked his right front paw.

“The officers said the brake line wasn't cut. Said the line burst, that it was ragged and worn. That there was no smooth cut as Harper's informant described. They said they could see the thin place, the weak spot in the plastic where it gave way.

“Nor was there a billfold,” Clyde said. “The officers didn't find a scrap of ID on the body, or in the car, or in the surround, as the snitch had said.”

Joe could feel his anger rising. Which uniforms had Harper sent down there? Those two new rookies he'd just hired?

Or had the cut line been removed?

Had the man he scented in the ravine that morning replaced the cut, black plastic tube with an old, broken one, and lifted the driver's wallet?

Those two pups knew the guy was there. He remembered how silent they had grown, how watchful, creeping along sniffing the man's scent.

“So this time,” Clyde said, “Harper's snitch was all wet.”

So this time,
Joe Grey thought crossly,
Harper's men didn't have the whole story—and Max Harper needs to know that.

Staring at the dog door, then out the kitchen window, Joe managed a sigh. He looked at the two plates set side by side on the kitchen counter, then back to the window, his nose against the glass. He continued in this vein until Wilma said, “For heaven's sakes, go over there and get her. Quit mooning around. She doesn't need to spend all night watching Lucinda.”